Refusing to draw queen cells

[KeyLargoBees]

I have a rescued queen less colony from a cutout that killed or drove off a caged queen after she was released.....they went probably a week after the queen was released before I realized they hadn't accepted her. I checked all of the frames and no eggs, larva, or capped brood (worker or drone) so I decided before I tried another queen I would see if they would make their own with a frame of eggs and young brood from another hive. In the event there were laying workers (even though there was no brood eggs or larvae) I decided to give it a weekly frame of brood and eggs and now after three weeks and three frames there is still no queen cell and no eggs, larvae or brood except for the frames I have inserted. Is it worth giving them a 4th frame or ordering another queen or should I just give it up as a bad deal and combine with another hive and call it a wash?

Has anyone else ever experienced something like this?

[GSF]

I can't answer your question. I have read that some species of bees will take longer to accept a queen from a different specie.

[Michael Bush]

First, sometimes a traumatized hive doesn't start a queen.  Usually they do.  Sometimes they already had a queen cell started and it only takes few days before there is a virgin queen loose in the hive.  Second, commercial queens sometimes take two weeks before they start to lay.  I would not assume just because there are no eggs that there is no queen.  She may just not be laying yet.  Giving them brood is good insurance all the way around.  It fills in the gap where no queen is laying (and odds are the hive you took them from has a queen who can lay more than they can care for so you probably didn't hurt them).  It gives them the brood pheromones to keep them from turning laying worker.  And it gives them the opportunity to raise a queen if they need to without interfering with the natural process of whatever is going on, such as a virgin who isn't laying yet, or a just released queen who isn't laying yet.

[KeyLargoBees]

its been a month as of yesterday since I discovered the queen cage empty...so its been 5 weeks since the queen was introduced and 4.5 weeks since I saw she was released. I woudl think even a virgin queen would have begun laying by now.

The past 3 weeks I have given them a frame of brood with the third frame in there yesterday.....nothing but honey and pollen in any frame other than the three I placed there.....I guess I will give it another week and add a 4th frame next Saturday and give it a few more weeks to see what happens......MB is right the donor queen is happily filling frames for me so it isn't really suffering from the swaps since I am giving them drawn combs in exchange.

Will keep you all updated :-)

[ed/La.]

You could put 1/2 the bees in a box above the other 1/2 and see which makes queen cell. Divide the 2 with double screen bottom board. Turn the original entrance 180 and new upper box the same direction as you have now.  Like doing a split. Probably get few queen cells out of it. You could cage queen cells and combine or not.

[TwT]

I had a hive go for 4 weeks with no eggs, they wouldn't build cells when I installed eggs and young lave frames, then all of a sudden after 4 weeks I had a full frame of eggs show up and found the young queen, I was about to add that hive to another but she finally started laying and did she, in a week had extremely full frames of eggs and larva. And I went through this hive about 10 times looking for a queen or a small virgin queen and never found her, but she was there.