Where's the queen?

[charles]

I checked a hive this weekend. This hive had been very strong; filled a deep and a medium. I had already put on a second medium. I inspected this weekend and found:

• no queen
• way more drones than in previous inspections
• plenty of capped brood and larvae
• no eggs
• supercedure cell with telltale pried-opened end

I checked on Friday and again on Saturday. Never saw the queen.

This hive showed no sign of supercedure desire the last time I opened them (abt 2 weeks ago). My thinking was that this was an old queen that was making too many drones, and the workers replaced her. My other hive also superceded during the same two weeks, but I found the new queen and some eggs just fine. Another thought was that it swarmed, but I seriously doubt it. I never saw queen cells hanging off the bottoms of the frames.

At what point do I need to be concerned that the new queen didn't make it back from a mating flight? When should I check again to make sure she's back and laying again? I don't want to overstress this colony. Is there anything I need to do?

[jdpro5010]

If you found a queen cell that had been opened from the end and not the side, I would wait a week and check for eggs.  If you saw the tip of the cell that had been bent back or opened I would quess that she just emerged.

[Michael Bush]

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm

[charles]

Update:

On Sat 5/23, I borrowed an egg frame from the next hive and swapped it. I'm going to open it again this Fri or Sat to see if they have made some queen cells. If not, I'll have to order a queen.

[charles]

I inspected today. I was expecting to see the egg frame I donated to have some queen cells started. All I saw were larvae. Looking around a bit more and I saw quite a bit of good brood cells being filled with honey. Hate to see them getting honey bound. I looked around some more, though, and found...  eggs!!

I can now see the wisdom in jdpro's and Michael's posts being borne out here. When I found the pried-opened queen cell back on the 15th, assuming the queen had just emerged, that still left me 12 days +/- 5 to expect to see eggs. Here it is the 28th, and there they are!! I just wish I knew why I couldn't find her before.

I inspected the other stronger hive, hoping to find and mark the queen. By that time, though, it was getting close to sunset and they were awfully sting-y. Got four hits trying to pry out the first frame. So I gave them a puff, put the supers back on, and called it a day.

I think I'll go out tomorrow in early afternoon to try to find and mark both queens.