Queenless again...

[Grid]

Looks like my remaining hive is now also queenless.  And REALLY grumpy - I got attacked, and stung up something fierce today. 

- Lots of bees in the hive, pollen and nectar being brought in.
- There were eggs and open brood 10 days ago.
- At that time:
            - I put a Mite Away II pad on.  Followed the instructions to a T, the weather has been within specs also.
            - I shook out my other hive, which was queenless, about 20 feet away.

There were a few (maybe 30-50) dead bees out in front of the hive the next morning.  I assumed some fighting when the shake out tried to move in, but it didn't look like much.  Today - 10 days later - lots of capped brood, NO eggs or larvae in either deep, and REALLY grumpy bees.

What could have happened?  Does it look like a dead queen as I suspect, and if so, why?  I thought I did everything right.

Any ideas/comments appreciated.

Thanks.
Grid.

[Jahjude]

So there were 2 hives,one Queenless and you shook out the queenless hive in attempt to have them combine with queenright hive is that it??? :?
Please correct me if i've misunderstood ok but if thats wat u did then seems u set up a battlefield.

Should have done a newspaper combine to join hives or taken a frame of eggs from queenright hive and add to queenless hive so they could rear a queen themselves.

[Grid]

There might have been a virgin queen in the queenless hive.  I had added a frame of eggs earlier to test if they were queenless.  I found an open queen cell 2.5 weeks later - long before any drones were flying - but I could not see a queen, or any eggs.  I did the shake out because I did not want to do a newspaper combine and have a chronically virgin queen (if she was in there) kill my good queen.

At least, that was my thinking.  I thought shake outs were a common way of combining hives without creating a battle field.  It is often suggested as a solution to Laying Workers, and no-one seems to think they will make their queenright hives queenless by doing that kind of shakeout.  Given that I likely have another queenless hive, obviously I could be wrong.

Thanks for replying.
Grid.

[Jahjude]

Ok kool,thot u knew for sure that they were queenless.So when u added frame of eggs that last tim,did u check after a few days to see if they were creating emergency queen cells??

Was thinking abt another option-Bare in mind i dont have a wealth of experience so mainly just try logical reasoning: Start a 2frame nuc with queen and then after few hrs combine assumed queenless hive with newly made queenless hive and see if they'll start creating emergency cells.

Kinda difficult not being sure if they were really queenless,If i'd been uncertain abt a virgin queen i thk i'd check atleast thrice on separate days with help from assistant(preferably more experienced beek) eyes to search for virgin. :-\

[Grid]

I have a 14 year old helper who checked the hive 3 days after putting in the frame of eggs about 6 weeks ago.  He said there was no sign of queen cells.  I thought "Good!  We have a queen who is just a late starter."  Of course, when I came and looked 2 weeks later, there was an open full-sized queen cell, and it was very early in the season, so no chance of her mating.  Looked and looked, and never saw her or eggs (single or multiple) right up until the shakeout 2 weeks ago.  Now, no eggs or larvae in what was a queenright hive; only backfilled comb (pollen and honey) and capped brood.  And super grumpy bees.

The remaining hive is a Russian.  They do seem to stop laying periodically, like in the fall last year.  I am hoping she has stopped due to the fumes from the Mite Away II pads, but then they were REALLY hot today.  They chased us persistently for a long way, too.  Very unlike them - usually quite a gentle hive.  Not sure, but I seem to recall that as a sign of being queenless.

Around here, no chance of queens for another two weeks earliest.  I have 3 nucs on order, and 3 queens (ordered when I thought I had two hives to split), but now I may not have any hives to put the queens in.  Hopefully it will work out.

[Jahjude]

Ooooh :imsorry: now that's a dilemma-aren't there any other beeks in ur area where u could atleast source a frame of eggs to put in hive??
It's puzzling tho,wud really like to hear the thots of the more experienced beeks.
I was under the impression that if a shake out was made of hive with virgin queen then she wouldn't enter an established hive but anything's possible in their world and i doubt we'll ever be around long enough to ever understand them (since they're not teaching us their language or showing an interest in ours ;) :-D )

[Brian D. Bray]

Requesting ur professional input in the following post: http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,27730.0.html

Thanks for the invite jahjude, I'm not a professional, just a hobbyist since 1959 with a mentor who started beekeeping in 1899, but I'll try to answer some questions about the subject of this post.

1.  Using a miticide us a good way to cause a hive to go queenless, I've seen too many times where chemical applications have had adverse effects on a hive, the weaker the hive the greater the effect.  Using a miticide causes a certain degree of brood and live bee fatality regardless of how precise dosing instructions are given.  The reason is that the workers that labor to remove the miticide come in contact with the food and or larvae of other bees.  The dosage can be sufficient to kill eggs and/or larvae as well as those bees that did the hazmat clean up of the miticide.  That is why I try to keep my apiary as natural as possible.

2.  I've seen a queen successfully mated as early as the 1st of March and I'm within 60 miles of the Canadian Border.  Just because one hive or apiary doesn't have a drone population doesn't mean a nearby one won't have a drone population.  Some things that can affect brood/drone stimulation is shading, elevation, prevailing winds, and relative daytime temperature.  A hive at 100 feet elevation will begin brood/drone propagation up to 2 weeks earlier than a hive in the same area but at 1000 feet elevation.  It's just like the flowering of fruit trees.  Lower elevations will flower days or weeks before the same flower at a higher elevation.  I live 160 feet above sea level, I can watch the fruit trees bloom starting at sea level and gradually work up to higher elevations, it takes 5 days from when the trees at sea level bloom until mine bloom.  That equates to a elevation index of approx 30 feet per day.

3. The norm from egg to hatched queen is 18 days (quick math is 3 weeks).  Add another 7 days for sufficient mating flights, and then another 7 days before eggs are expected.  That's 5 weeks total.  If a queen cell was noted and action was taken prior to 5 weeks can doom several hives within the same apiary depending on the action taken.
In this case it sounds as if a hive with a new queen (not yet laying) was shaken out and forced to attempt to take over a 2nd hive.  The 2nd hive reacted as if it were being robbed or invaded.  In the process 1 or both queens could have been killed.  The surviving populations have combined but are still very testy after the battle.  I wouldn't expect anthing less than a very proddy hive under such circumstances.

4.

The remaining hive is a Russian.  They do seem to stop laying periodically, like in the fall last year.

Correct. A Russian hive practices mite and other pest control via interrupting the brood cycle several times a year, usually after a moderate to major honey flow.  Treating Russian hives is a waste of time and money (IMO) as they do a pretty good job of their own.

5.  Queen cells are often hard to spot even by a practiced beekeeper.  I still have occasions where I've gone into a hive, inspected for queen cells, found none, split the hive, and then had the hive swarm anyway because of missed queen cells.  It is such, in the case of looking for queen cells, that if the beekeeper hasn't removed every bee from every frame while searching for queen cells he stands a very good chance of missing some.  And even then he could still miss some.

6. A queenless hive can be proddy, at first, but will soon settle down into a type of stupor along with making a keening sound, call it crying for want of a queen.  Such a hive with fresh eggs can grow another queen but if there are no eggs under 4 days of age the hive will most likely become layworker if not re queened, or die of population extinguishment if low in population to begin with.

Hope that helps, don't be afraid to PM me for more info if needed.


Brian :brian:

[Michael Bush]

Formic acid is known to kill queens at a higher rate than I would accept.  But it also will kill brood.  So maybe the queen is still alive but not laying at the moment.  There is also the possibility that they replaced her after she died and that queen isn't laying yet.

[Jahjude]

Thanks alot Brian n Michael definately helpful info on my part and i'm sure Grid will be having a new outlook up north.......We all gotta learn from mistakes rite,whether it be that of others or our own ;)

[Grid]

Yes, thank you both.  I was willing to give the emerged queen a chance, which is why I waited for 5-6 weeks of complete egglessness (is that a word?) before doing the shakeout.  So it sounds like you both feel that the formic acid is more likely the culprit than the shakeout, but that I should wait and see.  I suspect that formic acid killed the queen in my other hive last fall too.  Poo.  Didn't want to go treatment-free right away with only two hives in case they both died, and maybe killed them both anyway.

Well, back to the drawing board.  I have 3 nucs coming, so I'm not out of the game, and as Michael says, maybe a viable queen is in there, and time will tell.  I have a friend giving me a frame of eggs and brood this Saturday weather permitting.  Be interesting to see what that does.

And thanks, Jahjude, for bringing my post to people's attention.  I appreciate it.  :)

Grid.

[Michael Bush]

I've lost as high a percent of my hives to varroa when I treated as when I didn't back when I was on large cell.  I couldn't see the advantage... then with natural cell and solved that issues.

But Formic has a known issue.  Search google on "formic acid" and "queen loss" and other combinations and you can read about it.

The standard cure for a "possibly queenless" hive is a frame of eggs and brood.  For a hopelessly queenless (laying worker hive) it's a frame of eggs and brood every week for three weeks.  No reason to worry about whether or not they are queenless.  Just give them a frame of open brood every week until you have no doubts.