The Queen Died!

[djuniorfan8]

Here's the situation. My strong productive hive, in a two week period,(i was out of town :( ) went from frames of capped brood, queen looking good, honey supers on. To, TaaDaa! Queen no where to be found, no brood, brood nest now full of honey, and queen cells found hanging off the bottom of a frame. they were literally attached to the bottom of the frame bottom bar. 2 had no Queens in them, 1 was still capped over( she hatched about an hour later in my shed). The hive is still full of Bees, the queen was clipped. What happened?? I gave enough ventilation i thought, had afternoon shade. I swear just when you think you know what your doing, the Lord knocks you down a notch. Luckily i have a strong NUC with a fresh queen. So here my plan. I've gone through the hive and didn't see any new queen. ( but i was looking for the marked one) I'm going to perform a "shook swarm". empty all the hive out. Place a queen excluder on the bottom board under the first brood box ( to keep any supercedure queen out) place a couple brood frames from the NUC in the hive with the queen in a push in cage. I'll let the girls come marching back in, and be one happy family. The rest of the NUC i'm gonna combine via "newspaper method" with a package i started. What do you all think??- Tim

[dickm]

When the queen swarms she leaves behind several queen cells to take over. Seems like you interrupted a normal process. Now they need a queen, a queen cell or brood to make one.

Dickm

[Michael Bush]

I'm with dickm. They may end up queenless if you take all the cells away, or there may be a virgin running around in there. Hard to say where the clipped one went. They probably tried to swarm with her and she may have perished in the attempt.

[Terri]

Why don't you put in a frame with eggs from the nuc? If there is no queen they will make queen cells.

The LAST time I thought I had a queenless hive, there was a virgin in there.

[Robert Hawkins]

It's amazing how much the Lord gets blamed for the devil's work. If you clipped the quenn and they tried to swarm, she probably tried and didn't get too far. If they need a gueen and you cut/ruined/removed the queen they raised, we have a problem. It's usually a bad idea to remove/ruin the queen cells you find. Give them a queen or the means to make one before the workers start laying.

that's what MB meant to say. His posts are getting shorter. Old age?

Hawk

[Michael Bush]

>His posts are getting shorter. Old age?

Too many things to do what with raising queens, family and work AND beesource...

[Robert Hawkins]

I was thinkin of the word "cantankerous". But I know what you mean. I've got too much volunteer stuff going. It sometimes comes down to bees or sleep. Working a 12 hours shift now. Get off at 4AM. Church commitments 9-2. Work at 4 Pm tomorrow. That's just the weekend. But we don't get bored.

I've been skulking this list for two years Mike, and we disagree on two issues. That means you're almost perfect. good job.

Hawk