HOW to prevent workers from leaving with virgin queen

[thomas]

Hello

As some of you know i have two hives that are queenless so i put a frame of brood in each one to let them raise thier own queen. But the last few times they did this they swarmed with her on her flight and kept keeping the hive queenless so how can i put a stop to this. I can't afford to keep having them swarm every time a young virgin goes on her mating flight and i am seeing alot of drones dead on the ground.

Tom

[Ross]

Try keeping some open brood in the hive. That will usually keep the bees happy. And feed.

[MountainCamp]

Thomas, I think that there is some confusion here.
A hive that is queenless will raises a single or multiple queens as replacements, if given the resources.
The first queen to emerge will kill the others in their cells, or if the colony is strong enough, she may lead a swarm. This typically does not happen thou with an emergency replacement or supercedure queen.
Queens with after swarms are virgin queens and it may take 2 weeks or a little longer for her to mate and settle in and start laying.
It is possible that the virgin queen was killed during her mating flight or she actually returned to the wrong hive and again was killed.
I have never seen a colony raise successive queens from being queenless and swarm.

[thomas]

Hello

Mountaincamp i understand what you are saying but when i saw two young virgins on the same frame and they were not fighting and the others were coming out of thier cells. I know this sounds wierd and if i did not see it for myself i would not believe it myself i killed the other virgins but they kept on swarming and the last two swarms i found the young queens all of my old queens are marked and my neighbor got one of the swarms and she is laying like her mother is and the other young queen froze with her small swarm because i could not get to her.

Tom

[MountainCamp]

What is the remianing population of this hive?

If they are still very strong and there are additional swarm cells, you may want to break them up to a number of nucs.

This will resolve the swarming desire, get hem laying and anchored.

[Michael Bush]

>I have never seen a colony raise successive queens from being queenless and swarm.

Me neither.

[thomas]

Howdy

The colony is still huge and i have checked on them to see if they have eggs and brood but they do not. They are not as busy as they were so i think thats why they still have a large number of bees still in it. I was thinking of that splitting them leaving them one good size queen cell and taking the rest with some bees and putting in a nuc and moving them up near my house but since i put a frame of brood in they are not as mean now and has gone back to working i am going to look sunday to see if they have started building queen cells i only took a frame of brood that was in new comb so they could work it better for a bigger cell.

Tom