Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS => Topic started by: backyardhoney on June 06, 2011, 02:22:54 am
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I am new to beekeeping, and am in need of desperate help/advice. I checked on my new hive today, after being installed for a week, and found lots of new comb constructed, but my queen has vanished... There is no brood (capped or uncapped), very little pollen, and a lot of uncapped honey. Seems there were I believe 3 queen cells that were all empty. Now, that being said, I purchased a hive full of bees, brood (capped/uncapped), capped honey, and capped pollen from a reputable beekeeper. I just ordered a new queen, which I hope to introduce this next weekend. I have read in alot of the older posts that it would be wise to take a couple frames of brood/pollen/honey from the other hive, install into this queenless hive, before queen introduction. My question is, what do I replace the frames I take from the thriving hive with, and what do I do with the excess uncapped honey/polen from the queenless hive? As I said, there is probably a good 4-5 frames of uncapped honey/pollen in the queenless hive now (in a deep super). Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated. :)
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1 week old hive. And you could not find any eggs? Was it a package or a nuc? Was the queen in a cage?
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Was a package, queen was in a cage, set her in the hive with marshmellow in end, workers had released her 3 days later, and then 1 week after inspection, she was gone. No eggs, nothing, all uncapped honey
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I would give her a little more time to start laying again. New queen just released.
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take one frame of (mostly) open brood from the strong hive and swap it for an empty or partially drawn frame from other hive. do not take eggs or very young larva to swap or they will start building queen cells. take older and even capped brood. this should hold them for a few days until you get your new queen. when you introduce your new queen, check that there are no queen cells in hive. they will sometimes make them from old larva even though they wouldn't get a good queen. scrape those and put your new queen cage in. don't be in a rush to release her. even if she stays caged a week, it's ok.
if you are not really sure that she's gone, do as Allen says but also add a frame of eggs. if there is no queen, they will begin building queen cells and that's a good indication that she's gone. if they don't, you probably have an extra queen coming and you can make a nuc :-D .
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This is what you need if you go Queenless it worked for me. But I would pick from all the post what will work for you.
http://robo.bushkillfarms.com/downloads/beekeeping/QueenIntroFrame.pdf (http://robo.bushkillfarms.com/downloads/beekeeping/QueenIntroFrame.pdf)
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Sorry to say very few beginners can find the Queen, Also a LOT of Old Timers will pull your leg and say "they see them all the time " !! Ha-Ha :roll:
Bee-Bop
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I see the Queen all the time. In fact she is sitting on the couch next to me wanting me to go get her ice cream.
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Allen. Aren't you glad they don't put us out in the fall?
Backyard. I am with Allen. Give her a few more days. Eggs can be quite hard to see sometimes. Esp. for me.
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:-D