United hive ...7 days later loads of queen cells...what do I do now?

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juliabusybee

New Bee
Joined
Jul 25, 2011
Messages
35
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Location
Strathpeffer near Inverness
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
1
Not sure if any one can give me a bit of advice. I united 2 colonies on Sunday 24th August because 1 colony was, I am certain, queenless (A) and the other had a queen who was laying but not prolifically(B) and was only 4 frames. Colony (B) is a hived cast from a swarm in June.
I placed the queenless larger colony (A) on top of (B) using the newspaper uniting method with no queen excluder between them. Everything seemd to go ok and they settle down quite quickly.

Today I looked to see what was happening and the majority of the bees are in the brood box (A) packing it with honey. The bottom box (B) has the same amount of brood but with the addition of about 6 or more queen cells.
What do you suggest...I obviously don't want them to swarm but perhaps its unavoidable unless i perhaps do an artificial swarm....any help would be most welcome. Maybe they think that the queen who was in Colony (B) is not up to the job? A bit confused so any help would be much appreciated. thanks:thanks:
 
thanks for your quick reply and excellent notes on queen cells. I think if I remember correctly they look like swarm cells....(oh no not again!!) Bu to be absolutely sure I will have to go and look again tomorrow morning, then I will be able to be quite sure.
I will write back then.
thanks
Julia
 
Can you confirm you united with newspaper but no queen excluder? Could the queen have got into the other box and been killed by the bees -and then, having no queen the bees tried to make themselves a new queen?
 
Hi Juliabusybee,
My guess is that HM probably prefers to be looked after by the larger colony on top and bees prefer to move upwards. In addition heat rises and you have only got 4 frames in the bottom box with the nurse bees being left behind to look after the brood. In effect you have been running a double brood for a week and queen pheromone has reduced rapidly in bottom box thereof the emergency queen cells IMHO. This happened to one of my unites, but I did have the added reassurance that I had removed one queen. You do need to complete the unite now and find HM or eggs in order to decide what to do as regards the queen cells.
 
Hi all, today went and checked for eggs. Can't see any.
Couldn't see a queen either, but I am not good at this!
Also checked the queen cells which seem to be a bit mixed in size however I would say that they are not as long as usual and predominantly coming from the comb face rather than the edge (although there are 2 overhanging the bottom edge of one frame) . It is not therefore really clear cut as to the type but because there are no eggs I am coming down on the side of either emergency cells or supercedure cells.

Definitely no queen excluder used in uniting the hives.

Really don't want them to be queenless as this hive has a lot of bees and I thought I was doing the rignt thing by uniting them, it would be such a shame to lose them.
:thanks:
 
Sounds like bees in top box executed queen in bottom box, how long had they been queenless for?
 
emergency cells and no eggs = queenless (usually)
 
If no eggs have been seen for 14 days in hive A then did it swarm ? if so you have a virgin queen which you need to leave for another week or two but remove all the QC's.
 
hi,
hive (A) did swarm, I caught the swarm and hived it in another hive in another location. This colony are doing well.
I did not realise that hive (A) was queenless as there were still a lot of bees despite having swarmed. Perhaps I should have added some frames of brood earlier but just kept thinking that they would raise a queen. Then the brood that there was hatched and I took my eye of the ball and left them to it, so to speak. The brood frames are now just be used for storing honey.
Hive (B) was another swarm that I had hived and seemed to be coming along ok but the queen was very slow to lay on only 4 frames and so I thought perhaps it would be a good thing to unite them...obvously a bad idea, in hind sight.

I'm not sure why you ask "If no eggs have been seen for 14 days in hive A then did it swarm", when do you mean? I don't think it has swarmed again.
 
emergency cells and no eggs = queenless (usually)

Hi masterBK,
I would agree in principle, but this is a unite. Mine did just that, but I new there was a queen laying well in one box and queenless in the other box because I had removed her which instantly led to emergency QC in that box. I removed all the QC and layered them. Done.
I removed three QC, three days ago, from another colony with a newly mated queen laying up two frames of beautiful worker brood and a smattering at the edges. One sealed and one unsealed QC with just RJ, and one sealed with larva all on its own with no other brood on that frame, which I find strange? Checked today, no more QCs, but some more eggs. This was also a unite which did not cause any problems at the time.
I do not think they have killed the queen, and I would do the same again, but I have a spare queen. They have a split brood nest and are acting as two colonies, not really united at this moment in time. They keep you on your toes don't they?
 
hi,
hive (A) did swarm, I caught the swarm and hived it in another hive in another location. This colony are doing well.
I did not realise that hive (A) was queenless as there were still a lot of bees despite having swarmed. Perhaps I should have added some frames of brood earlier but just kept thinking that they would raise a queen. Then the brood that there was hatched and I took my eye of the ball and left them to it, so to speak. The brood frames are now just be used for storing honey.
Hive (B) was another swarm that I had hived and seemed to be coming along ok but the queen was very slow to lay on only 4 frames and so I thought perhaps it would be a good thing to unite them...obvously a bad idea, in hind sight.

I'm not sure why you ask "If no eggs have been seen for 14 days in hive A then did it swarm", when do you mean? I don't think it has swarmed again.

I'm not sure why you ask "If no eggs have been seen for 14 days in hive A then did it swarm", when do you mean? I don't think it has swarmed again.[/QUOTE]
When hive A originally swarmed it obviously left a sealed queen cell, so the time you last seen eggs from the old queen and eggs from your new queen can be as long as six weeks so 14 days is not long enough to establish that the hive is queenless
 
Similar situation for me as well. I had 2 small colonies which I wanted to unite. One had a 2014 queen who was laying well. The other was queenless - not sure what happened to her but she disappeared.

Anyway, combined them via the newspaper method. They took ages to go through newspaper, and then it was all-out-war. Lost loads of bees. I found the queen a couple of days later, amongst a mass of bees. Looked like they were either balling her, protecting her, or just enthusiastic to have her. A couple of days later, and no sign of the queen, but new queen cells started. So they killed her. Damn them.

Am now waiting to see when new queen starts laying - hopefully will confirm this tomorrow.
 
Hi Julia
You said:
Not sure if any one can give me a bit of advice. I united 2 colonies on Sunday 24th August because 1 colony was, I am certain, queenless (A) and the other had a queen who was laying but not prolifically(B) and was only 4 frames.
Most of us can never be certain about our bees let alone be certain about a hive being queen less.
If you remove the queen yourself there may be a supercedure queen living alongside her mother!
Most look for emergency QCs after we remove the queen or use a test frame with eggs/young larvae to check for queen less / queen right.
Could you let us know why you were so certain it was queenless?
Alec
 
Looking back now it was actually the beginning of August that I had noticed there were no eggs being laid and gradually the existing capped brood emerged and the colony just used the brood frames for storing honey. So I suppose I got the feeling I had to do something to save the bees from just fading away and decided to unite them with a weaker one. On reflection I should have put a test frame in instead.
I looked into the hive yesterday and the queenless colony (A) have since the uniting produced an emergency queen cell right in the middle of one of the frames which is open. It definitely wasn't there before the unite. As I have said there are other smaller cells in colony (B). I have decided to leave them to it and not to disturb them (unless this is a bad idea) and maybe there is a virgin queen in there somewhere that might eventually start laying. But time is not on my side.

All input so far has been most welcome from all .

regards
Julia
 

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