Queenless in Missouri

[Pond Creek Farm]

I believe I have confirmed what I feared:  our established hive has no queen. The boys and I tore the hive down to the bottom board and did not see a queen.  More telling, however, was the absence of anything suggesting a queen was present.  There are now a fair number of bees, but we found only a handful of capped brood (like 20 in two deeps), a fair amount of capped honey and some uncapped honey.  I did not see any uncapped brood either (the little pink larva curled up in the bottom of the cells are what I mean, but I may not be using the term correctly).  The hive is more agressive than it was earlier in the year, and it has a distinct buzz from deep within that I do not remember before.  I have never seen or heard a queenless hive before, so I am simply going on descriptions from my readings. Incidentally, I saw no queen cells in which the bees might be raising their own replacement.

I am in need of a queen. Having not done this before, I do not wish to learn by trial and error, so I thought I could turn to the forum for recommendations on where to get one and information on when to expect delivery, laying, etc. I understand that publicly recommending a specific supplier may be touchy, but I would appreciate a PM if that is the case. Any advice on how install the quuen and what to expect afterwards would also be nice.

A complicating factor is that I was in the process of regressing this hive to small cell.  Many of the deeps in the hive (although still untouched) are HSC.  When I requeen, should I simply put in exclusively HSC and put the frames of honey and uncapped honey out for the bees to rob? Perhaps it would be better to put it over the inncer cover and an excluder and allow the bees to transfer it into the HSC for later.  I am also moving to medium and could cut the HSC with a band saw and start the hive after requeening in mediums.  Perhaps I am being too ambitions.


One last, but difficult lesson, I learned was that it is easy to misunderstand and misapply advice given.  I have been trying to figure out why the hive is queenless when I have always found a queen during an inspection and at one point saw several queen cups.  Ultimately, I think this is likely my own fault. I was told as a swarm prevention to always cut off queen cells when I see them.  This, I now believe, is not such a good idea.  I think that if I had left the cells alone, the bees would have righted thier own situation.  Instead my intervention has created a crisis where one need not have occurred.

[Bee-Bop]

You might try the " Beekeepers Assoiation of the Ozarks " for information, I believe in Ash Grove.

Sometimes you can find what you are looking for just about in your backyard.

Bee-Bop

[Shizzell]

Hello,

And welcome to the "world of trying to understand bees", I'll be your host for today's episode - "Learning to cope when you think you've done something wrong but are not completely sure"

Heh.

I'll continue, some older beekeepers understand that we humans have very very little control over what bees WANT to do. We can trick them into different things, like change their foundation, etc. But once you get a little more experienced, you'll notice that you have to figure out your own way of beekeeping. Usually when I see a capped queen cell, and no eggs or larva, I leave it. First of all, I know that either the queen has died, or is failing. One thing that all of us have to get a customed to is the number of different ways to beekeep there is, there is no way that is the best, and there is always a different perspective from every different angle. And the best thing about learning on your own with more than one perspective is you can test the different ways and create your own way to beekeep.

It sounds like you don't have a queen. I've purchased different queens from all over the country, and never really had a problem, so I would just go for the most reputable buyer you know, and stick with that.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode ;)

Jake

[BMAC]

One last, but difficult lesson, I learned was that it is easy to misunderstand and misapply advice given.  I have been trying to figure out why the hive is queenless when I have always found a queen during an inspection and at one point saw several queen cups.  Ultimately, I think this is likely my own fault. I was told as a swarm prevention to always cut off queen cells when I see them.  This, I now believe, is not such a good idea.  I think that if I had left the cells alone, the bees would have righted thier own situation.  Instead my intervention has created a crisis where one need not have occurred.

Most of the big research guys say that the day a queen cell is capped is the day they will swarm.  I know this is not always true, but if those queen cells were capped, then it is most difficult to keep them from swarming and maybe better next time to put out a bait hive with a pheromone in it to lure the swarm and let them raise another queen.

Food for thought anyway.

[CBEE]

I found out the hard way that some people do things just because someone else told them to do it wether it works or not makes no difference. They learn nothing from observing the results of what they do or don't do. There are a lot of beeks around where I live but only a couple now that I trust with advise.

[mairghead]

What kind of bees do you have? 

[Pond Creek Farm]

This hive are Italians I believe.

[Scadsobees]

This is another good reason to have more than one hive.  You could put a frame of eggs and they will raise another.

Any eggs yet?  How long ago did this swarm thing happen?  I find a lot of queen cells where it is very hard to detect them, there is the possibility that you did still have a virgin queen that took a little longer to start laying.  About 2-3 weeks after the swarm is when you can start to see eggs again, and by that time all of the larvae should be capped.  I would double check for eggs on the frames where the most bees are before getting a queen, although from your description I wouldn't expect any.

Yeah, cutting queen cells is risky.  I try to take some of them off, but will always leave at least one.  In a hive that I went through Saturday that wanted to swarm I found 20 cells, of which at least 5 were on the verge of hatching.  That is fun to watch (I saved a few of those virgins).

Rick

[Pond Creek Farm]

I bought a queen from my local bee club president and installed this evening. The hive was not happy at my intrusion. I took the opportunity to take out all large cell comb and replaced with HSC. I hope they accept the queen. I have learned a good lesson with this and will not make at least this mistake again.

[Shizzell]

I have learned a good lesson with this and will not make at least this mistake again.

Count on making it many more times in your beekeeping career. It happens to the best of us. The thing that you want to learn, is the best way to introduce them, and prevent it from happening again. It WILL happen again.

=)

Jake

[Michael Bush]

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfallacies.htm#nobroodnoqueen