Hive 1 Queen is dead!

[Rodni73]

Inspected both hives today. Hive 2 has a great deal of broods and bees as well as developing larveys and sealed broods.

Hive 1 has no brood or eggs at all on any of the frames However there are many workers bees in it and sealed honey. I removed 5 frames of brood from hive 2 and brushed the bees off of them.  3 of these have big solid patches of sealed brood on both side as well as developing larvae of various stages.  From the very very tiny to ready to be caped larvae and Inserted them in hive 1.

I hope the workers and the emmerging broods in hive 1 will now make a queen.

My question is should I order a new queen or just let them make their own queen? Will they make a queen from the larvey frames?

Thank you
-Rodni

[hankdog1]

Well i'd wait and see it's gonna set them back about a month not having a queen though by the time she emerges and gets mated.  One frame of brood should have been sufficent though as you've set the other hive back some too now.  Just keep an eye on them looking for queen cells though and i hope you made sure to make sure one of the frames had eggs in it.  Hope this helps but since you've done what you have done just keep an eye on things and wait to see if they are building queen cells if they are all should be well. 

[Natalie]

I would have added a frame or two but not 5. Thats alot to take from the other hive unless its booming. I don't know about your area but the only problem I would imagine is if there aren't any drones around to mate with a new queen.
I went through all of my hives today and found eggs, brood and honey in all of them but did not see one single drone.
I had planned to make some splits but put it off until I see some drones.
Good luck with it though, its early enough in the season to catch them both up.

[Rodni73]

Thank you for responding. I will be picking up a new marked queen on Wednesday the 7th.  This should solve the problem.


-Rodni

[Mason]

The same thing happened to me but I went the other direction.

I put all of the bees from the queenless hive into the hive with the producing queen.  No newspaper or anything.  I just took the frames with bees and put them in the other hive.  There was no fighting or dead bees out front and everything seems fine.

My thoughts were it was better to have one strong hive than 2 weak ones.

[Rodni73]

I just got my cordovan Italian queen today. It is marked. I pierced the candy a little.
I opened the queenless hive and I placed the queen cage in and...and
by Sunday I hope I will see eggs and larvie.. or a dead queen....!

-Rodni

[sarafina]

Were there any queen cells in the queenless hive when you introduced the new queen?  You said you gave them some frames of brood from another hive.

When I re-queened I didn't even pull the cork for 2 days so they would have a chance to accept her pheromones since they had only been queenless for 24 hours (I smeared the old queen on the new queen's cage also but you don't have that option).  Then I pulled the cork and pierced the candy and put her back in and didn't check again for 4 days - found an empty cage so she had been released.

Good luck and I hope you find brood soon!

[Rodni73]

No there are no queen cells at all. All the larvie I put in were caped. I hope they will accept her!

-Rodni

[Rodni73]

Checked on bees today! Sae a blond (Cordovan) queen with a bleu dot on back! Egggs & larvie.... They accepted here!

[MacfromNS]

Good for you.