Can two queens go off-lay at once?

[Dusty Rhodes]

Inspected my two home hives on Sunday.

Hive 1 - my old queen, about whom I've waxed lyrical - with plenty of open and capped brood.
Hive 2 - her daughter. Not seen her this year. On Sunday, capped brood, no open brood, no eggs - no queen cells.

Decided to put a test frame from Hive 1 into hive 2. Couldn't find any eggs. (I'm usually ok to find eggs.)

Shut up shop to think about it and wait for a day with more sun.

Looked in again today.
Hive one - queen seen, capped brood, open brood (some very small larvae) - but again, no eggs. No queen cells anywhere.
And I did look carefully, in the light of there being small larvae around.
Hive 2 - as before - fewer capped brood, of course.

Low varroa count 2 weeks ago. No signs of diarrhoea or other nasties.

Any thoughts, chaps and chapesses?


Dusty

 

[Teemore]

Both colonies will largely be foraging in the same environment. If there is no income for the colonies in that environment then they will cut down on their expenditure.... i.e. slim down the queen so she isn't laying and so reduce the number of wee mouths they have to feed. It'll not take much for the queens to start off laying again I should think.

 

[itma]

An LED torch can help to show up any eggs more clearly. (There is some UV in the light from 'white' LEDs and it seems to make the eggs fluoresce.) Even with new 'reading' glasses, the cheap little torch definitely helps.



Secondly, tiny (worker !) larvae (early stage open brood) is exactly what is required for building an emergency QC upon.
Tiny (worker) larvae, but no QC suggests no emergency - as long as those really are worker larvae, which you can confirm once they are sealed.


Thirdly, a shortage of pollen income (rather than nectar) is the sort of thing that would be more likely to hold back brooding (because they should have some honey stores).

 

[iand]

I noticed a fortnight ago, all mine only had sealed brood.
Weather remained cold so gave them a splash of syrup on Friday, Sunday when I was able to do a quick check, after a warm Saturday (12-13c), they had eggs every where.
A bit of warmth is needed to get things going now, even the osr is waiting on the weather.

 

[Arfermo]

I noticed a fortnight ago, all mine only had sealed brood.
Weather remained cold so gave them a splash of syrup on Friday, Sunday when I was able to do a quick check, after a warm Saturday (12-13c), they had eggs every where.
A bit of warmth is needed to get things going now, even the osr is waiting on the weather.

If there is any uncapped brood cells then thery must have been eggs very recently and somewhere will be a laying queen. Stop flapping, find her and mark and clip.

 

[Dusty Rhodes]

Thank you, all.

Afermo, I think you misunderstood.


The colony with the uncapped brood is the one where there is a queen.
The other, I can see neither queen nor uncapped brood.

As for flapping, it's all I have left to provide any excitement in my dreary life!

Dusty

 

[itma]

Did you go ahead and steal the frame of brood for hive 2? I initially thought you had, now it seems like maybe you didn't.
Its actually tiny larvae that are wanted for the test frame, not really eggs.
So, if you have those, use them!

If there are really tiny tiny tiny larvae today, there must have been eggs yesterday!

How are the stores?
Is there nectar being evaporated down, and pollen in evidence on the brood frames? (If there's no supers on, would some 'stimulative' feeding be in order?