I think my package killed the Queen

[sparks]

Went into a new hive today after waiting all I could.  Installed the package on Wednesday and in a brief moment of frustration ended up letting the queen cage sit on the SBB with a hole poked through the candy.  One of the new fangled plastic cages that I had never seen on all the videos that I watched and I could not get it hung.  Anyhow, just before noon today I went into this one hive that I really hadn't seen much activity at the entrance from.  There were plenty of bees in there and they were drawing comb on at least half the eight frames.  Some pollen gathering was going on also.  Found the queen being balled right beside the empty cage and after encouraging the ball to break up a bit saw the queen laying still.  Could see no eggs in the middle two frames that I removed but then again as a new beek I have never laid eyes on any egg.  The comb looked nice and clean except for some pollen stores. 

After all that above, the question is what would you do now?  I know that I have not too much time to wait till the hive declines without a mom.  The other hives seem to be doing great.  I installed a nuc (which was boiling over) and another package and will check that package this evening.

Chuck (needing some good advice) Sparks

[Kathyp]

are all your hives packages?  if you can swipe a frame of eggs and brood from another, you'll know in short order whether they have a queen or not.  chance are, there were two queens in there and the bees killed one.  you might not see much in 3 days especially if you have trouble seeing eggs.  if you can add a frame of eggs and young brood, and they start making queen cells, your question will be answered and your problem solved.

try taking some pictures of your frames.  then you can get a close up look on your computer.

[hankdog1]

Well you have two options here you can get on the horn and order a queen ASAP or if you have a frame of brood with eggs you can give that to them in hopes they will raise a queen.  But i'd make sure i would make a move really quick because if you wait to long you'll end up with a laying worker which is just a pain in the rear to fix.  Hope this helps if you go with the frame of brood make real sure it's got eggs in it as after so many days of development they can't use the brood fram to make a queen.  Oooh yeah make sure your queen in the other hive isn't on that frame if your adding brood and since you have a pretty good amount of bees in the hive i'd shake off the frame before adding it to the other hive.  Good luck queen problems can be a real headache at times.

[Michael Bush]

There is a high likelihood that there is another queen loose in the package and that's why they rejected this one.

[Brian D. Bray]

If frames of brood are available it is always a 1st option on accessing whether or not a hive is queenless.  The hives reaction to that frame will tell the beekeeper a lot.  If they do nothing then they either have a dormant queen (non-laying) for some reason, believe they are queenright (which is possible), or are confused.

Why use a frame of brood:

If they begin building supercedure cells (in this case anywhere on the frame)then they are definitely queenless and it is best to let them proceed with replacing the queen.  If the beekeeper objects to the natural replacement this method entails then they can requeen once the new queen has hatched.  Removing the queen cells or killing the new queen too soon or too long before requeening can cause a host of problems.

Packages often harbor the queen from one or more of the hives the worker bees were collected from.  In this case the hive already has a queen and any attempt to requeen will continue to result in lost queens until the resident queen is located.  There is the possibility that the queen lose in the package is more mature and of just as good of stock as the one in the cage so leave it alone.

Some queen are slow to begin laying when aggitated to the point that packaged bees are so giving the bees enough time to settle down and begin drawing combs etc also gives any queen in the package time to do the same.  A package will only have the possibility of an immediately laying queen if drawn comb is provided when hived.  A frame of brood will help keep the population up and gives the queen (if present) a place to begin laying.

In all those cases the frame of brood helps the beekeeper determine what is going on in the hive and the frame of brood can delay for a month or more the establishement of laying workers.