Odd hive inspection

Started by NeilTheCop, April 30, 2015, 07:21:20 PM

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NeilTheCop

It's been 21 days since I installed the package into my top bar hive. Three days after the instal I checked and the queen was out of her cage, but I couldn't find her anywhere.
On checking today I found that comb was being drawn on five of the bars but no sign of the queen, no brood, no eggs, a little uncapped honey, but oddly quite a few capped drone cells and plenty of drones!!
So I'm assuming that the queen did at some point lay the drone eggs, but nothing else.
Is this cause for concern?
Some days, it's not even worth chewing through the restraints

jayj200

sounds loke a laying worker. get another queen

BeeMaster2

Look carefully in the cells for eggs. Is there just one egg per cell. If only one, your queen was never mated. My the queen in my first hive had defective wing virus which means she could never make her maiden flights. If you have enough bees left you might be able to save it with a new queen.
If there are multiple eggs on the sides of the cells, you probably have multiple laying workers. Even a new queen may not save this hive. I would get a new hive remove the old one, place the new one in the old site and empty the old one a good ways away from the site. They will help populate the new hive without the laying workers. Good luck.
Jim
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin