Help - no eggs, no brood

MikeG · July 25, 2007, 05:34:49 PM

My April 28 package has been doing gangbusters. 1 deep and 2 med supers tall, LOTS of gorgeous honey. My May 14 package has been real slow all along.

Today is my first time in them in almost two weeks. The April 28 package has no eggs or brood. The queen was scurrying all over the place, as she has always done, but I never saw her pick out a cell and lay an egg in it. What in the world could be going on??

The May 14 package has lots of eggs and brood, though I couldn't find the queen. I always have trouble finding her. Her mark is black, the other one (which is easy to find) is marked with white.

Can a queen go sterile?

pdmattox · July 25, 2007, 07:54:29 PM

You may have gotten a bad queen. Try putting a frame of eggs and brood from the good hive and put it in the troubled hive and see what happens.

MikeG · July 25, 2007, 08:52:12 PM

Well, my problem is in the hive that has had a really great queen. This hive has double or more of the population of the other hive. She just quit laying.

The other hive definitely has a poor queen. Only by my generosity/stupidity is she still there.

Greg Peck · July 25, 2007, 09:26:01 PM

I have the same problem.. I hopped on here today to ask the same question. I have one hive that was a swarm that had taken over a dead hive which had drawn comb and honey ext. They were doing outstanding, they had filled a super with honey way before the others had even really started. I had put a second super on and they have barely done anything with it while the other hives are filling there's up. The last time I checked on the supers the bees got angry which had never happened with this hive. Then today I opened the inner cover after smoking them and got dive bombed and stung on the neck. So I suited up and went through the hive. There was only one frame that had capped brood on it and it was drone brood I did not see the queen but I rarely see the queen in my two swarm hives because they are almost black in color. I did not see any eggs or larva anywhere else in the hive. There is still a lot of bees in the hive and the other hives in the yard all have lots of brood in them. I did install a queen excluder several weeks back. Would the queen just start laying in the open comb in the super if I had accidentally trapped her up there? So should I buy a queen to attempt to get a little more honey out of this flow or just add a frame of eggs and wait the 4 or 5 weeks until any new bees begin to emerge? I wanted to start a Russian hive anyway should I just get a Russian queen?

Kathyp · July 25, 2007, 09:29:49 PM

same problem here. best hive-no queen all of a sudden. nothing but drone cells. twice i have given brood. if i don't see a good chance of viable queen cells this time, i will order a queen.....or, if my split has made a good queen, i'll combine with queenless hive and hope for the best.
i should be able to make a decision by the end of this week.

it's getting kind of late to be messing with this :-(

MikeG · July 25, 2007, 10:29:01 PM

I watched my queen walk all over the empty foundation. She would look into every 4th or 6th cell, then reject it. Fickle woman! Again, this WAS an extremely productive queen.

She has a deep with 2/3 of the cells empty, ready to go. The other 1/3 is filled with honey and pollen. The two medium supers above the deep are almost completely full of honey. Many of the frames ARE full.

Michael Bush · July 25, 2007, 10:33:38 PM

>Can a queen go sterile?

Yes. She can quit laying because of a dearth or she can just run out of eggs and quit laying altogether. But the ones that do that are usually three or four years old.

Rich V · July 25, 2007, 11:12:21 PM

Myself and several other beekeepers have had the same problem with packages that we bought this year. The queens just stopped laying,and had to be replaced. Then we all heard the same rumor that the packaged queens were already a year old.

Michael Bush · July 25, 2007, 11:44:16 PM

It may also be the issue of the chemicals (Cumaphos in particular) affecting the fertility of the queens and the drones.

Rich V · July 26, 2007, 11:20:28 AM

Michael
What is the cumaphos used for?

KONASDAD · July 26, 2007, 11:29:26 AM

Coumophous is Check-Mite medication. I used it once, and never again. Synthetic garbage. Very dangerous as well. The commercial beek recommended it as I bought hive from him, I followed his lead. It killed the mites, but I had queen problems in that hive all spring. They are straightened out now and my self-made queen is huge and a great layer. This hive actually collected more honey than my other one as it had no brood to care for during height of flow. She kicked in just as flow leveled off and wained. They are now in awesome shape for fall flow I hope.

Kathyp · July 26, 2007, 12:58:30 PM

yes!!!! the bee god smiled on my hive. today i found larve and reall capped brood. no drone cells!! i'll check again in a few days, but just maybe they are going to be ok.

i am going to recombine the crappy hive, make sure there are eggs, and kill that queen. they won't make it anyway with her.

Greg Peck · July 26, 2007, 06:08:50 PM

I went out today an bought a queen from Bjorn Apiaries and intended on installing her today. But when I opened the hive I found new eggs. Hopefully not a laying worker, there was just one per cell and right in the center of the cell. The owner of BA Mike said that I could have had a situation were there was a virgin queen that had not started laying yet and now she is. So now I have a queen that needs a home. I guess I will split a strong hive this weekend.

wtiger · July 26, 2007, 09:49:48 PM

I had a one of my hives do the same thing on me. There was a break in the brood cycle to where almost all the capped brood had hatched out. Got a new queen and a week later there were eggs and larva all over the place and I found my marked queen in the middle of the second frame that I pulled surrounded with eggs. I did 2 or 3 deep inspections before without finding her.

Kathyp · July 26, 2007, 10:12:02 PM

greg, what a great way to be forced to expand! i intentionally killed a queen today and after all my queen troubles this year i sure felt bad. oh well, it was either her dead, or the whole hive going down.....

sean · July 26, 2007, 10:21:21 PM

Hey send her to i need a few :-D

KONASDAD · July 27, 2007, 12:03:35 PM

Make a nuc, feed it if theres a dearth and you'll have a young queen for spring. Also able to use sugar shakes and its very effective on nucs as they are small and easy to manage. Expansion!!! yeaaa!