Rookie mistakes

snowmix · April 16, 2014, 11:33:30 PM

I am going into my second year in bee keeping. I went into my hives about three or four weeks ago to early I'm sure. Anyway in my first hive I found about 8 queen cells. I found the queen looking very skinny and beaten up almost all of the paint on her back had been chewed off. I decided that I would confine her to the bottom box with a queen excluder. I made a split with the biggest of the queen cells. When I later inspected the hive the queen was acting normal she had laid two frames full of eggs so I decided to move the rest of the cells into the split and remove the queen excluder. The next day I found her dead outside the hive. I decided to move the extra cells back into this hive. About a week ago I saw a bee bringing out a larva. When I got a closer look it was a headless queen larva. Now today I noticed that all of the queen cells had been opened from the side. There is no eggs or brood but the bees are calm.

Hive 2 was a swarm that found me last summer. This hive was really good all summer and I wanted to mark the queen. I found her and marked he but I made a mistake after I marked her. I placed her on the top bar of a frame and I noticed one of the guard bees seemed to be acting aggressively to her. Some of the other bees moved around her and started feeding her. The guard bee moved away and I closed up the hive. I opened the hive twice in the weeks following this and could not find her. About two weeks ago I went back into the hive and my wife ended up spotting a small black queen. I have saw this queen out flying last week. I went to look for eggs yesterday there was none and I didn't see the queen. The bees were very aggressive.

You can see her in this picture.

Right now I feel like I'm kind of in a panic state. I probably have three virgin queens very few drones. No larva if these queens don't mate I'll have three dead hives.

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snowmix · April 16, 2014, 11:35:45 PM

Sorry

BeeMaster2 · April 17, 2014, 01:37:19 AM

I do not see a queen in this picture. Just workers.
When you marked the queen, did you give her enough time for the paint to dry before you put her back in the hive.
If you have a new queen and you mess with the hive before her eggs turn into larva and prove to the hive that she is a good queen, the bees will blame their problems on the queen and kill her. Also if you remove most of the eggs and there is little brood left, this indicates to the hive that she is not laying enough eggs for the hive to survive and they remove her.
Most of the time when I go into a hive, I am looking for signs of the queen, eggs and very young larva. Once I spot this. I close it up.
Jim

Michael Bush · April 17, 2014, 07:13:52 AM

The dark bee in the picture is a worker as sawdstmakr said. Sounds like they replaced the queen. It can take up to three weeks from emergence for a new queen to start laying with two weeks being the norm for finding eggs.

snowmix · April 17, 2014, 09:57:33 PM

When is the deadline I should use to decide when to buy a queen.

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BeeMaster2 · April 17, 2014, 11:31:33 PM

Quote from: snowmix on April 17, 2014, 09:57:33 PM
When is the deadline I should use to decide when to buy a queen.

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Not sure which hive you are referring to. The first hive probably has a virgin that should be mating about now. Leave her alone to let her get established.
As per the second hive. Not sure you are seeing the real queen. Was the queen that you saw dead still marked. You said you saw the queen out side of the hive. I suspect it may have just been a large worker. I may bee wrong but I did the same thing my first year or so. Especially when I thought there was something wrong. Then every large bee on the ground looked like a queen.
Not sure when you marked the queen. You say you saw this queen out flying. I have seen queens come out of a hive during swarming/mating flights (looks like a swarm) but I have never seen a queen out flying.
If she made her mating flights she should bee laying eggs within about 3-4 days.
If there are no eggs and you will need to get a queen right away. If you have a strong hive and there is no brood in this hive, I would put a frame of brood in it from the strong hives. Brood is what keeps the workers from laying eggs when there is no queen in the hive.
Sounds like you go through your hives from top to bottom quite regularly. This alone can cause a lot of problems. You are a new beekeeper and need to bee in the hives to learn what is going on. Since you have 3 hives. Alternate your hives so you are a hive once every 3 weeks. Sounds like you only have new queens, so they will not be swarming.
Jim

snowmix · April 18, 2014, 05:26:04 PM

I have been going into them a lot because I'm worried that they have no queen and no way to make a new one. Sorry for the quality of the picture but the black bee on the right is the queen I'm sure of it. I watched her walk around the outside of the box for about 15 minutes she then took off and that is the last I saw of her.

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GSF · April 18, 2014, 08:07:35 PM

If indeed it was the queen you saw then the only answer is she went on a mating flight. If she had packed her bags and was leaving there would be a big mess of bees in the air leaving with her. Do the bee math and give it enough time so you can visually see the larva in the cells before you check again.

BeeMaster2 · April 18, 2014, 11:11:29 PM

Quote from: snowmix on April 18, 2014, 05:26:04 PM
I have been going into them a lot because I'm worried that they have no queen and no way to make a new one. Sorry for the quality of the picture but the black bee on the right is the queen I'm sure of it. I watched her walk around the outside of the box for about 15 minutes she then took off and that is the last I saw of her.

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If you are talking about the black bee on the line between the boxes, it looks like a worker to me.
Jim

snowmix · April 18, 2014, 11:29:59 PM

Here is another picture of it. I'm starting to wonder if I wasn't just seeing what I wanted to see

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BeeMaster2 · April 19, 2014, 12:25:31 AM

That is a different bee. That looks like a young queen. She is much larger, elongated abdomen. Notice how much hair she still has on her thorax. She was probably doing her orientation flights.
Jim

TenshiB · April 19, 2014, 12:44:29 AM

How many hives would you recommend to be in the area to be fairly certain that the virgin queen has a fair shot at successful mating flights? I've found that our top bar hives serve as GREAT drone mother colonies..

Also, the dark bee on the outside of those hive bodies just looks like an old/stressed worker bee to me.. Sorta like how when a bee on her way out of this world loses a lot of her color, yanno?

marktrl · April 19, 2014, 01:03:32 AM

If you download and zoom in on that second picture it is definitely a queen.

BeeMaster2 · April 19, 2014, 07:38:45 AM

Quote from: TenshiB on April 19, 2014, 12:44:29 AM
How many hives would you recommend to be in the area to be fairly certain that the virgin queen has a fair shot at successful mating flights? I've found that our top bar hives serve as GREAT drone mother colonies..

Also, the dark bee on the outside of those hive bodies just looks like an old/stressed worker bee to me.. Sorta like how when a bee on her way out of this world loses a lot of her color, yanno?

Your top bar hive is of of value to your virgin queens. Remember, your drones only go out about a kilometer (.6 of a mile) from their hives. The queen doubles that distance to make sure she doesn't mates with her drones.
Jim