Queen found dead last week

[annette]

NO, not mine. I am mentoring a beekeeper who started his package hive this past Spring. His hive has been so, so strong and healthy all along. He took about 40 lbs of honey this past Fall from one hive.

Anyway, I checked on this hive with him about 1 month ago and they were looking fabulous. He just called me last week as he noticed a small cluster of bees hanging off the landing board. Later in day there were a few bees hanging out on the landing board and he looked and saw the queen with her white dot. She was not looking to great, not moving much. He placed her into a queen cage and brought her inside the house where it was warm. She moved a bit, but ended up dying.

What the heck is going on with this?? We are having our winter weather right now and I am at a loss what to tell him.

The only thing that came to mind is the queen was superceded in the Fall and allowed to live in the hive for a while until they kicked her out.

Other than this, it doesn't look good for his hive.

What do you all think about this?

Thanks for the help
Annette

[BlevinsBees]

That's probably what happened. I discovered two queens in one of my hives, the older one was dragging her left rear leg around moving kinda slow. The younger smaller one was running around and it didn't look like she had mated yet. Sometimes they supersede and allow the Mom to live until the daughter is ready to lay, then they kill Mom.

[Michael Bush]

That would be my guess. She was probably replaced but they didn't dispose of her until now.

[annette]

OK this makes me feel better and I will pass this information on to him. I hope this is the case.

Thanks for the responses which I truly appreciate always.

Annette

[Country Heart]

Good luck.  I hope that is what happened and his hive will be fine.

[caticind]

Agreed.  One of my lines of hives has shown a distinct tendency to have mother-daughter teams.  Fully half of the splits have two queens at some point during the year.  Just checked on one hive which had a team its second year, now entering its third year. It has shut down laying and I saw both queens, one older and looking healthy (though slimmed down), the other quite fuzzy and likely has not laid before (abdomen very triangular - wide at the join to the thorax and tapering quickly to a point, yet still obviously a queen).

There are still occasional drones around here, so I'm confident that the younger queen did get mated.  We'll see in the spring whether I still have both.