New queen flew away, but we have queen cells...now what?

[Rurification]

New beeks.  10 frame deep lang, foundationless.  Installed April 3.  Killed the bad queen, late evening May 29.  Installed new queen morning, May 30.

The nitty gritty details:

We had to get a new queen because the other wasn't laying anymore. [$25 here in central Indiana]  I installed her on Wednesday morning and checked her this morning [Sunday].  She was still in the cage, so we let her out.   She promptly flew away.  [We saw her orienting, so maybe she'll come back?]

We checked the rest of the hive and these guys have almost 2 dozen queen caps/cells in various stages with and without larvae and we saw 3 that were capped.   

Nice calm bees, even with all the drama.   We took a frame of eggs out of the other hive and put it in this one to keep the population going.   

How long should we wait until we check them again?   What should we check them for?  [Open cells, piping, etc.?]

Advice welcome.

[czman11]

I wish I could help you but all I have is experiences from others since I am new beek. However, you mention that you had a lot of queen cells which would indicate that your bees knew that your queen is not performing well and decided to raise a new one. I have foundation less hives also but I follow Warre's method. He mentions in his book that killing the queen may be a mistake since the new queen that emerges from the new cell is stronger and kills the old one anyway and that way nature ensures that the colony will survive. Since you had many queen cells in your hive and most of them empty, that would indicate that you may have a new queen in the hive already but you just have not spot it yet. Warre mentions that sometime 2 queens (old one and new one) each laying eggs in different part of the hive will not fight it out until they get to close proximity of each other so that could be the reason for the old queen still being there. The queen you introduced to your hive flew away maybe because it was not accepted by the bees since they already had new one.

I know I may be wrong and I know that my post may not help you much but it gives you hope that you may have a new queen already. I hope that would be the case.

Best wishes and all the luck

Paul

[Kathyp]

what did they make queen cells out of if your old queen quit laying?

[Rurification]

what did they make queen cells out of if your old queen quit laying?

I'm thinking she was laying just a bit.   She'd go down into a cell, but not let go of the egg.   She'd bring it back up with her.    She must have been getting it right once in a while.

Also we had put a frame of eggs in from the other hive.   There are queen cells with larvae on that frame. 

[Joe D]

Maybe the queen you released will come back, if not may one of the queen cells you put in hive will work.  The one I installed a couple of weeks ago I picked up from breeders bee yard, no attendants.  I laid the queen cage down at the entrance for a few mins.  Did hit the hive with a little smoke first.  They paid her no attention to her, so I opened the hive moved some frames and held her between to frames of bees for a few mins.  They did not attack her, so I opened the cage and let her loose close to the bottom of hive between those frames.  First time I inspected 2 days latter could not find her, and she is a cordovan queen with a yellow dot.  Was 4 more days before I could get back to check, there she was on first frame and had laid some on 2 frames.  Good luck with yours.

Joe

[JackM]

For those that missed the precursor to this event,.....
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,37774.0.html

Boy your are just having nothing but issues with that hive.  So sorry for ya.  I tried the grow a queen and ran out of time and just so happened to stumble over someone with strong Nuc's for sale and got one.  Didn't want to miss the main flow.  Hope things get better for ya.