Requeening tomorrow.

[Mklangelo]

I have three colonies.   C1 and C3 are drawing comb on the frames in the upper brood chambers I installed on 5/17 so well that I didn't even bother looking into the lower box on C3.  Lots of brood in both of these. The population explosion is right on time in those two hives. 

As far as C2 goes, I saw one huge drone, could not identify a queen and there were some capped cells but they were up near the top of the frames and were capped white, not the nice gold color caps I have seen on brood thus far in all of the hives.  As I understand they will store nectar or syrup near the top of a frame.   Near the middle and bottoms of the frames I saw some glistening substance at the bottom of those cells but did not see eggs or larvae.  I also saw a recently exited drone cell.  It was not downward pointing but was bulbous in shape and came out horizontally from the frame. 

Here is a link to a pic from 5/08  containing what myself and several others in the forum thought were queen cells, could these have been drone cells?  Why would drones be produced when there is no queen to mate?  (if indeed that was the case)       http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php?topic=9330.msg59761#msg59761


could these have been drone cells and that for some reason the queen I installed with the package was injured or for some reason stopped laying?  As of today, 5/28, I see no brood at all.  I'm going to requeen tomorrow.


Two questions:

1.)  If there is a queen in there, she is obviously weak and not laying.  What will happen when the new queen is released into the hive?

2.)  If there is a laying worker, what will happen when the new queen is released into the hive?  I seriously doubt that either case is the scenario but I'm just trying to cover all the possibilities.

I'm almost sure the colony is queenless though.


Any advice is greatly appreciated!


 :-D

EDIT:  When I insert the new queen tomorrow, I will be also adding a frame of brood from one of my other hives.

[Kathyp]

you don't have laying workers if there were no eggs.  what happened to the queen cells?  did they hatch out?  do you have a young queen in there that is not laying yet?

hives produce drones.  i found some drone cells in my booming hive.  no queen cells.  probably drone cells in the other but i didn't look.  i see drones around. 

if you requeen and you have a queen in there, someone will die.  hopefully not your new queen that you just paid for!  i'm sure you'll get ideas from others, but i'd just recommend that you make sure  that you don't have a young queen in there.

[Understudy]

If you have an existing queen in the hive even a weak one. The bees will kill the queen in the cage. The same will happen if there is a laying worker.  You should take the hive with the laying worker and move it out about 150 yards. Shake all the bees out. Return the hive. Most of the bees except the laying worker will return.


Sincerely,
Brendhan

[Brian D. Bray]

Do as Understudy suggests, then add the frame of brood and introduce the queen. If the old queen stopped laying because she was injured chances are she won't make it back to the hive either.

[Shawn]

Let me ask another question to that. If I have a queen that is doing her job but eh hive is way to defensive how do I replace her. Ive heard to just find her, get rid of her, and then put the new queen in her box in the hive. Is there something else? I did a search on the site for "how to replace a queen that already has a queen and did not find anything. Sorry if this turns into a previous post.

[Brian D. Bray]

Let me ask another question to that. If I have a queen that is doing her job but eh hive is way to defensive how do I replace her. Ive heard to just find her, get rid of her, and then put the new queen in her box in the hive. Is there something else? I did a search on the site for "how to replace a queen that already has a queen and did not find anything. Sorry if this turns into a previous post.

Do a complete hive shake out.  A laying queen is usually too large to fly well, if at all.  By shaking out the bees and returning just the frames to the hives you can get rid of the old queen.  Then either wait a day or so and then requeen or put a frame of brood that has already been shaken out in a box along with the new queen.  In the latter case the bees return to a queen right hive and the remaining brood frames can be added.

[Understudy]

Let me ask another question to that. If I have a queen that is doing her job but eh hive is way to defensive how do I replace her. Ive heard to just find her, get rid of her, and then put the new queen in her box in the hive. Is there something else? I did a search on the site for "how to replace a queen that already has a queen and did not find anything. Sorry if this turns into a previous post.

I have a hive that is gotten hot recently. So I am going to requeen it. However I am going to break it down first to find her.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesrequeeninghot.htm
I will turn her into swarm lure.

Then I will do a newspaper combine to bring them back.

Sincerely,
Brendhan