bustergrimes
New Bee
I'm sure I've done something wrong here but can't put my finger on it...
Basically I tried to unite a queenless colony and a strong artificial swarm I made a couple of months ago. The artificial swarm had a laying queen (made from a QC in the spring) and already had a super added.
The queenright box is on the bottom with a QE and a super on top. Then I put the newspaper on top of the super and then the queenless colony on top of that. When I returned to rearrange the frames and tidy up there were a number of supersedure cells in the bottom box and at least 2 virgin queens wandering about and one of them was piping (or quacking).
I broke down about another 10+ supersedure cells, tidied up and put the hive back together in the hope that the bees will choose from the queens in there and she mates and starts laying asap.
The queenless colony had no brood and very few bees left. The queen from this colony seemingly disappeared for no apparent reason a while ago and it already failed to accept a QC from another hive and also failed to make QU from a test frame. So now I'm wondering if it was queenless after all?
I need to unite another colony soon and I want to make sure this doesn't happen again. Any help appreciated. Once again I feel like a bad beekeeper
Basically I tried to unite a queenless colony and a strong artificial swarm I made a couple of months ago. The artificial swarm had a laying queen (made from a QC in the spring) and already had a super added.
The queenright box is on the bottom with a QE and a super on top. Then I put the newspaper on top of the super and then the queenless colony on top of that. When I returned to rearrange the frames and tidy up there were a number of supersedure cells in the bottom box and at least 2 virgin queens wandering about and one of them was piping (or quacking).
I broke down about another 10+ supersedure cells, tidied up and put the hive back together in the hope that the bees will choose from the queens in there and she mates and starts laying asap.
The queenless colony had no brood and very few bees left. The queen from this colony seemingly disappeared for no apparent reason a while ago and it already failed to accept a QC from another hive and also failed to make QU from a test frame. So now I'm wondering if it was queenless after all?
I need to unite another colony soon and I want to make sure this doesn't happen again. Any help appreciated. Once again I feel like a bad beekeeper