new queens absconded

jaseemtp · May 18, 2012, 11:37:05 PM

No better way to title it. I recieved 7 queens the other day, I had made their reciepent hives queenless for 24ish hours before placing the new queens in the hives. I did check them for any E-queen cells and did not notice any. I was not able to leave the queenless longer because I had to go out of state and did not have any one around to work the bees for me.
The queens were placed the day I left and 4 days later when I returned 4 of the 7 hives were empty.

I am runnin 8 frame medium hives. These were fully functional hives when I removed their queens. After removing the old queens, I added 1 quart of 2:1 syrup and reduced the entrance down to one bee space. I an not sure what went wrong or how I fouled it up. Any thoughts?
I know that idealy they are suppose to be queenless for 48 hours but the time was not allowed to me and I do not think the ladies would have made it 7 days in their cages inside my house.

BlueBee · May 18, 2012, 11:51:24 PM

Did you release the queens in the hive after 24 hours or did you put the queens in the hive inside queen cages + candy cap?

Don't know what happened, but is robbing a possibility? It seems like the house bees are lost without a queen and don't try to defend the hive like they should when the queen is missing. That + syrup is a open call to robbers. I agree that 2:1 is less of a dinner bell than 1:1, but robbing might still be a culprit.

Was there open brood in these hives when you put the queen in? Bees are really reluctant to leave a hive with open brood.

I assume the hives were not overrun with pests? I guess there are always other possible explanations too like CCD, but I'm just trying to rule in/out the obvious scenarios. Sorry for your loss.

jaseemtp · May 18, 2012, 11:58:44 PM

I guess robbing could have happened since I was not here to keep an eye on them. I have been very luck because I have only seen a few mites and beetles. There was capped brood, but not open since I did not want them to try and raise their own queen.

iddee · May 19, 2012, 12:16:33 AM

The way I understand your posts, you removed the queens from fully functional hives and 24 hours later there was no open brood. How could this be?

jaseemtp · May 19, 2012, 02:56:53 AM

They were not completely free of uncapped brood, but I did try to keep it to a minimun, by removing the frames that were not mostly capped. Not sure if that helped or hurt my situtation

hoxbar · May 19, 2012, 10:40:23 PM

Why would you not want capped brood in your hive? :?

jaseemtp · May 20, 2012, 12:47:34 AM

to try and keep them from raising a queen from their genetics and hope they would be more willing to accept the new one. Guess I showed them :?

Michael Bush · May 20, 2012, 08:14:51 AM

Bees are much more apt to abscond when they have no open brood... and 24 hours is about perfect for adding a queen. In 48 they will start emergency cells. Were the queen cages empty? Were there dead bees around?

jaseemtp · May 20, 2012, 10:01:22 AM

Yes sir the queen cages were empty. There were not any dead bees around,only a few recently emerged workers were inside. I have some old shingles on the ground under and in front of my hives so I can see what is going on and there were no little bee bodies around.