Queenless no more?

[winginit]

My second new hive this year is a package from Georgia. It's been doing really well, and two weeks ago I put a screened bottom board on. I brought the wrong one, so I had to change the bees over to a top entrance. A week later, the hive was full of supercedure and swarm cells. I thought maybe I had induced this by letting the hive get too cold, so I switched back to a bottom entrance, moved frames around to "open up" the hive, etc.

This week, the bees haven't swarmed and they seem calmed down. Two queen cells have hatched. But there are no eggs and few larvae. So the problem was apparently not temperature related, but lack of a queen.

I didn't search for the queen as I was running out of energy. I put everything away, walked over to the pond and layed down on the dock (100 feet from hives). I took a phone call. As I got off the phone, a bee stung my hand!

Do I need to go back and look for that queen? I'm hoping not as I need to go cell phone shopping. After I fish my cell phone out of the pond.  :-P

[tefer2]

She was probably on you the whole time!

[hankdog1]

If you found empty cells I would wait around a couple of weeks just for her to get mated and pump up so you can find her easier.  It's not all that uncommon to have a package supercede the queen.  Also once you fish that phone out don't turn it on take the battery out and bury it all in a bowl of rice for a couple of days then take it out and try powering it up.  May or may not work I know some guys that have saved phones that way worth a try.  Good luck with the bees and the phone.

[winginit]

She was probably on you the whole time!

No doubt!

[winginit]

If you found empty cells I would wait around a couple of weeks just for her to get mated and pump up so you can find her easier.  It's not all that uncommon to have a package supercede the queen.  Also once you fish that phone out don't turn it on take the battery out and bury it all in a bowl of rice for a couple of days then take it out and try powering it up.  May or may not work I know some guys that have saved phones that way worth a try.  Good luck with the bees and the phone.

Thanks. Tried the rice thing for about 30 minutes then raced to Verizon. Did you know they put a special paper inside the phone and on the battery so they can tell if the phone was submerged? I went ahead and just gave it to them to recycle.

On the bees, they were making a loud noise last week and this week they were quiet, so maybe they are queenright. Sure hope so, no time to do much with them with vacation coming up.