davie
New Bee
Hi All,
I am new and having a great afternoon reading through the forum. My question requires a back story and why I ended up purchasing a new queen.
I purchased 2 local 5 frame nucs in July and set them up South facing in national hives. I have been feeding them 1:1 sugar syrup to help get the established before winter and to encourage srawing out comb on foundation. Nuc 'A' was stronger than there other and more active however, I never saw the queen. I didn't want to disturb the hive too much and inspected every 10 days to look but failed to see queen. (I found the queen in the other hive and all is well). Gradually I noticed hive 'A' reducing activity to/from the hive. We are around the 20th August now. I inspect the hive and find no capped brood, larvae or eggs. Furthermore, the bee numbers have visually reduced, I could still not locate the queen and I found 9 queen cells and 2 emergency queen cells. All the queen cells looked open and I could not determine whether they had been sealed and 'hatched', or whether they had been produced by the bees in swarm preperations. I saught advice and determined that swarming was very unlikely to happen for a small colony at the end of the summer. Thus I concluded that I could have lost the queen by crushing, transferring frames from the nuc to the hive, or when I had the frames out inspecting them, and the hive was queenless.
The temprement of the hive had also got worse so with this, and no signs of brood I decided I needed to buy a new mated queen to try and save the colony before the winter. Unfortunately (or not!) I then went on holiday for 10 days but the queen I ordered was due to be shipped on the day of my return, so worked out well.
Yesterday (8th Sep) the queen arrived. I had previously made the preperations by removing the queen cells so went to put the queen in the hive for 48 hrs. I opened the hive and can instantly see more activity. Inside the hive there is brood at all stages (eggs, larvae, capped), no queen cells. Plus I also saw an unmarked queen (the queens from the nuc were marked).
So now I am assumming the original queen from the nuc 'A' did swarm. But I don't understand why and cannot find any reasoning in the usual begginers books. Early August there was a big wasp problem but I tried to manage this by using traps around the hive entrance and reducing the entrance size. Could this stress have caused the queen to swarm?
But my dilemma now is what to do wth the purchase mated queen? Currently she is in the hive, in the cage waiting for me to remove the tab and allow access to the candy. At the time I was going to proceed with introducing the new queen, release her and then the stronger queen would survive. But this seems a bit of a waste. I don't think I have enough spare stores/brood to start a small 2 frame nuc to over winter her in.
Its been a steep learning curve but wondered what someone else would do with my situation before I release the queen?
Thanks
I am new and having a great afternoon reading through the forum. My question requires a back story and why I ended up purchasing a new queen.
I purchased 2 local 5 frame nucs in July and set them up South facing in national hives. I have been feeding them 1:1 sugar syrup to help get the established before winter and to encourage srawing out comb on foundation. Nuc 'A' was stronger than there other and more active however, I never saw the queen. I didn't want to disturb the hive too much and inspected every 10 days to look but failed to see queen. (I found the queen in the other hive and all is well). Gradually I noticed hive 'A' reducing activity to/from the hive. We are around the 20th August now. I inspect the hive and find no capped brood, larvae or eggs. Furthermore, the bee numbers have visually reduced, I could still not locate the queen and I found 9 queen cells and 2 emergency queen cells. All the queen cells looked open and I could not determine whether they had been sealed and 'hatched', or whether they had been produced by the bees in swarm preperations. I saught advice and determined that swarming was very unlikely to happen for a small colony at the end of the summer. Thus I concluded that I could have lost the queen by crushing, transferring frames from the nuc to the hive, or when I had the frames out inspecting them, and the hive was queenless.
The temprement of the hive had also got worse so with this, and no signs of brood I decided I needed to buy a new mated queen to try and save the colony before the winter. Unfortunately (or not!) I then went on holiday for 10 days but the queen I ordered was due to be shipped on the day of my return, so worked out well.
Yesterday (8th Sep) the queen arrived. I had previously made the preperations by removing the queen cells so went to put the queen in the hive for 48 hrs. I opened the hive and can instantly see more activity. Inside the hive there is brood at all stages (eggs, larvae, capped), no queen cells. Plus I also saw an unmarked queen (the queens from the nuc were marked).
So now I am assumming the original queen from the nuc 'A' did swarm. But I don't understand why and cannot find any reasoning in the usual begginers books. Early August there was a big wasp problem but I tried to manage this by using traps around the hive entrance and reducing the entrance size. Could this stress have caused the queen to swarm?
But my dilemma now is what to do wth the purchase mated queen? Currently she is in the hive, in the cage waiting for me to remove the tab and allow access to the candy. At the time I was going to proceed with introducing the new queen, release her and then the stronger queen would survive. But this seems a bit of a waste. I don't think I have enough spare stores/brood to start a small 2 frame nuc to over winter her in.
Its been a steep learning curve but wondered what someone else would do with my situation before I release the queen?
Thanks