New queen getting bit?

[chief]

While introducing a queen this past week here is what I did.

1. Made hive (just a five frame nuc) queenless on Thursday.
2. Introduce queen in cage on Friday.
3. Removed cork to expose candy on Monday.
4. Checked and found the candy eaten and the queen released on Tuesday.

My dilemma comes when I went to look for the queen. She had been marked but the dot was small. I found a queen after looking for a minute or two but she was not marked. Not only was she not marked but she was running around like a bat out’a hell and getting bit by the bees as she passed. As I looked closer I noticed the bees had also started a few emergency cells but none were capped yet. I checked for eggs thinking that maybe this queen had bee a second queen from the original colony but I found no eggs. What should I do? My thinking is that the bees have been biting my new queen and have removed the small marking. Should I cage her again and destroy the emergency queen cells? Are they the reason the hive isn’t accepting her? I really don’t think this new queen could have come from anywhere else as there are no hatched queen cells in the nuc and there are no eggs.

[jean-marc]

It sounds like a virgin to me.

Jean-Marc

[chief]

To be honest it looked like a virgin to me. The delema was that I found no hatched cells? I guess I'll wait it out and see. If it is a virgin then why are they making emergency queen cells? Also if it's a virgin then I just lost one of my new Purvis Brothers queens. That sucks.

[iddee]

If there are no eggs, how are they making emergency queen cells?

[chief]

They made them with the eggs that where there when I made them queenless on Thursday. They were not capped as of Tuesday when I checked on them.

[chief]

So I checked on the queen situation again this morning. I found the queen and this time she appears to be fully accepted and moving slowly and not running. She is full size and fat which makes me think she is not a virgin. If this was the marked queen I introduced she is no longer marked. Is it possible that the bees would pick the marking off? I have heard of this happening but I thought it as very rare. She was in the act of destroying the emergency cells that the hive had started when I made it queenless. I helped her out on one cell and it had just been capped and the queen inside was still a larva. I am of the opinion now that this is the queen I introduced minus the marking. What do you guys think?

[ July 20, 2006, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: chief ]

[Michael Bush]

The other queen may have been a virgin from a different hive that returned to the wrong hive.