Queen laying

[chief]

IÂ’ve got a split with a queen cell I stole from one of my hives that swarmed. It has about 2 1/2 frames of sealed brood with about 3-4 frames of food stores and the rest empty foundation. I plan on buying a new queen for my hive that swarmed but I want to let the split IÂ’ve created produce their own queen with the queen cell I have given them. My question is how long will it take before my queen is laying? I figure 16 days till she hatches, 3 days till she is mated, and 3 more days till she is laying. This adds up to 22 days or so until she is laying. Does that sound right? Add 21 days for worker brood and you have 43 days until workers emerge.

The people that I buy my queens from say that it will take up to 50 days to have hatched brood if I go this route. So how long does it really take? And what am I missing if anything?

[Robert Brenchley]

She should be laying within 3-4 weeks of hatching; if there's nothing by then, give up on her. It all depends on the weather; the UK is particularly difficult for this due to long spells of cool wet weather in summer when many strains won't even try to mate.

[Michael Bush]

From egg to a laying queen is 28 days (give or take a few). If they had a queen cell started it was at least four days old which shortend that to 24 days. If it was capped then it was at least 8 days old which shorted that to 20 days.

Assuming you started with an egg (which you didn't) 28 days plus 21 days is 49 days so the 50 days would be close. But you didn't.

Let's do a FAIR comparison.

You buy a queen.

3 days to get to you.
3 days to fatten back up and start laying because it was in a queen bank (stometimes it takes a week)
21 days for those bees to emerge
------------
27 days

You put a queen cell (not capped) in a nuc
24 days to emerge, mate and start laying (could be less this is maximum)
21 days for those bees to emerge
---------------------------------
44 days

The difference is:

+ 44 days
- 27 days
--------
= 17 days difference. (worst case with an uncapped cell)

Swarm queens are the best!

[Robert Hawkins]

Chief, would you expect the people that you buy queens from to tell you to raise your own queens? We say it because it's best for you, best for beekeeping and best for the bees. What you did in raising and introducing that swarm queen is heroic.

Way to go!

Hawk