queenless hive developments

[ragnar]

Hello All,

So on Sunday 13 April I was inspecting my 2 hives and confirmed that hive number 2 was queenless. I took two frames of eggs/larva/brood from hive 1, and inserted them into hive 2, in the hopes they would make an emergency queen cell. 6 days later (Saturday 19 April) I checked the queenless hive again, and there was a capped emergency queen cell on one of the two frames I had stolen from the other hive. I went back to check today, and the emergency queen cell was open. Is this timeline possible? It's only been 11 days since I inserted the brood frames into the queenless hive, and I thought that was too soon for a queen to have hatched. At what stage in the egg/larva development cycle can the bees generate a queen?

[cdray]

Sounds like it's too soon to me.... look at the bee math, on Michael Bush's website.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm

[HomeSteadDreamer]

It was 11 since you inserted but that egg might have been 3 days old.  so that puts you at 14 which is just on the under side of 15 days.  The minimum for Michael's chart.  Are you sure it emerged or was ripped out.  was the cap nicely opened (often times still hanging there like a trap door) or chewed from the side?

Either way I'd add another round of eggs.  It will either keep their population up until she can fly or give them more eggs to make a queen with or both. 

[sterling]

They could have made a queen using a two day old larva add 11 days to that and it equalls 16 days. 3 days egg 2 days larve 11 days = 16 days= emerging queen. Give her a couple weeks then check for eggs.