Question about queenless hives

[ragnar]

Hello All,

So I have a queen question for you all. Of my two hives, one is going gangbusters, and the other – while heavily populated with bees – is queenless. Last week when I opened both hives, the queenless hive had quite a bit of open larva at various stages of growth, but I found no eggs and no queen. This weekend all the larva is capped and there are still no new eggs. I didn't rip out every frame, but I didn't see any emergency queen cells on the ones I did check. Today I took two frames of eggs/larva/capped brood from the strong hive and put them into the queenless hive (thank you Michael Bush for that tip...). However, I'm a bit concerned that since they didn't form any emergency cells over the course of the last week with their existing larva, they might not take advantage of the new eggs/larva I'm giving them.

My other hive is building out fast - I use deep bodies, and last weekend I added a 3rd deep body to that hive; As of today they have made significant progress drawing the new box out. I'm a bit concerned they may try to swarm, which got me wondering...if it does make a swarm cell, can I put the old queen and some frames of brood into the other queenless hive? Or is this a recipe for disaster?

I've been looking around for available queens, but no one seems to have them right now. Just wondering what other options I have if they don't fix the problem themselves....

[sc-bee]

See what happens with the frame of eggs. They should start making cells if queenless. If they don't you may have a virgin queen or one not laying yet. What is the possibility it swarmed and you were unaware of it? Are they cleaning cells? Cleaning and polishing cells is sometimes a sign of having a queen but waiting for here to start laying. The frame of eggs is the best test. You put them in today 3- 4 days you should know.

[don2]

Did you check for swarm cells? The Queen stops laying several days prier to swarming. Not seeing eggs does not necessarily mean there is no queen. d2

[ragnar]

It's possible they swarmed and I didn't catch it. I checked the bottom of one box for swarm cells and saw none, but now that I think about it, I did not check the bottom of the other box. I will go back in a few days and take a look to see.