Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: psbeekeeper on August 13, 2011, 11:20:57 pm
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One of my hives went queenless about 2 weeks ago (I didn't see an egg or larvae anywhere, just capped brood), I did see an open queen cell however so I figured I would give it about 2 weeks and check back. Well 2 weeks happened today and I checked the hive hoping to see some eggs, but not 1 in sight. They have lots of pollen and honey, and I did see them bringing in pollen as well to. Just for fun I took 2 frames full of capped brood and eggs out of my other hive and put it in the queenless hive to see see if anything would happen.
I understand that's it's rather late in the season, but do you think their is a chance in the world that this hive may get a laying queen before winter comes? My only concern is the drone population at this time. How long should I wait to combine my queenless hive with my queenright hive or should I not combine at all? Thoughts anybody?
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I would wait 7 more days. Then check the two added frames for queen cells, and check all frames for eggs. If neither were found, then i would combine.
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problem will be drones. if you don't still have any around your queen won't get mated. how long until your first frost?
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Still drones here in Michigan and still capped drone cells. However at this late date, you would be pushing your luck to end up with a mated queen. By the time a new walk away queen is mated and laying you would probably be looking at the 2nd week of Sept. She would then need to lay winter bees since your current bees will be dead by winter. That takes another 21 days. We typically get a hard frost (flower killing) up here around Oct 15th. You don’t want to go into winter with a low number of winter bees.
If the phase of the moon is perfect and the bee Gods are shinning on you, you might luck out. If you’re not feeling very lucky though, I would follow Iddee’s advice or I would buy a mated queen and stick her in there ASAP.
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problem will be drones. if you don't still have any around your queen won't get mated. how long until your first frost?
I think the first frost is probably in the next month or 2. Not sure if anybody else around here can confirm that or not.
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Not sure what your elevation is in danville but you should have a good two months + before the frost monster comes, less if youre in the higher elevations....
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Not sure what your elevation is in danville but you should have a good two months + before the frost monster comes, less if youre in the higher elevations....
So you're telling me that I should have a good chance for a mated queen to pull through before the season ends? :-D
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I think like kathyp put is , if there are drones around, which , I think there should still be a few that arent dead LOL.... and you feed them good , although we have been having a lot of good rain for august so the flow in teh fall should be good.... they might make it