Queenless Hive

[ape...@wisc.edu]

Hello MadBees,

I only have one colony here in Madison and it is now queenless. It looks like it has been without egg laying for at least 10 days. There are about 10-15 queen cells with 3-4th instar "future queens".

I am wondering if anyone has mated queens this week or know of a connection in Dane county for purchasing a mated queen. 

Thank you,

Avery

[Nathan Clarke]

I have queens for sale in Madison. Italian Hybrids, marked with a red dot. $30.00.

Nathan Clarke

nat...@madurbanbees.com

608-622-7965

[Scott Johnson]

You can also cut down all but two queen cells and let them raise their own. Some will comment that you'll lose population waiting for the queen to emerge and mate, which is true, but you're also getting a brood break (fights mites) and the workers will pull in a lot of honey with less brood to care for right now, with plenty of time to build up in the rest of the summer. If your hive is big enough, you could split it into two or three with two queen cells, some brood, honey, and empty frames. Lots of options! Good luck!

Scott

========================================
Scott Johnson Ph.D.

Director
Low Technology Institute

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[marvin]

My first questions is where are the queen cells located and is your hive eggless or truly queenless?  If the cells are on the bottom of frames, and there's a queen who's not laying, your hive is getting ready to swarm.  That's a tough one to turn around, but consider reading up on the Demaree (sp?) method for swarm suppression. 

If the queen cells are scattered about and you're truly queenless, your hive is superceding.  Your hive has already taken control of the situation.  I'd just let them go and raise their own queen.  You won't lose that much production, and you won't have to deal with the hive not accepting a foreign queen.  Plus, as Scott suggested, a cache of queen cells can come in pretty handy this time of year.  And it's a whole lot better situation than being queenless without queen cells!

On Tuesday, May 22, 2018 at 6:46:09 PM UTC-5, ape...@wisc.edu wrote:

[Joseph Bessetti]

If you have uncapped queen cells, then those eggs were laid no more than 7.5 days ago.  If you have uncapped worker cells, then those eggs were laid no more than 9 days ago.

Unless this colony was weak or just recently installed I tend to agree with the advice to let them raise a queen.  

I would not destroy any of the queen cells.  The first one to emerge will kill the rest, and the first one to emerge is the one you want because she was the best fed and fastest to develop.  With an emergency situation like this there are often some "duds" that got less food and will develop poorly; you don't want to kill most of the cells and end up with a poor queen or no queen because you picked the wrong ones to leave.

Joe

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From: mad...@googlegroups.com <mad...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of marvin <marvin...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2018 8:17 AM
To: madbees
Subject: [madbees] Re: Queenless Hive

 

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