fatscher
08-11-2008, 02:02 PM
I discovered a queenless hive this weekend. It's a bait hive on a screen cone trap-out. It's been queenless for no more than 3-4 weeks because the last time I saw a queen in there was 3-4 weeks ago. When I inspected the hive this Saturday I saw no signs of laying workers.
So I closed up the hive and fed it (no other hives present) some sugar syrup via a hive top feeder.
Since the hive was queenless I decided to intro a marked queen from a nuc I had in reserve at another apiary. I put her in a plastic queen cage & stuffed two small candy marshmellows into the cage entrance. Then I drove back to the trap-out bait hive & put the cage in the middle of the bottom board of this queenless hive. I didn't put the cage between two frames.
After about a 15 minute period, I noticed the bees had stirred up into a feeding frenzy. I noticed a few were fighting with each other.
Despite all this I decided to leave the queen cage in, hoping she would help calm down the frenzy.
The homeowner for the trap-out e-mailed me this morning reporting the empty queen cage was found on the ground in front of the hive. She said there were about 30-50 dead bees littering the ground. She said late yesterday, she saw the queen cage just peeking out from the bottom board entrance.
It is clear to me the hive underwent a robbing situation with itself, which is very odd. Granted, this is a cone-trapout. The vast majority of the bees had seemed to adopt the bait hive, there was a cluster of maybe 50-100 bees still residual near the screen cone.
I feel the outlook for my queen, a $25 SMR Italian hybrid, is grim. I can't imagine they accepted her in just 36-48 hours.
Sometimes the bees are pretty easy to predict, and other times (like this) they are not. But, I chalk a lot of this up to my inexperience. In hindsight, I would've taken that queen cage the heck outta there. This learning thing is costing me money!
So I closed up the hive and fed it (no other hives present) some sugar syrup via a hive top feeder.
Since the hive was queenless I decided to intro a marked queen from a nuc I had in reserve at another apiary. I put her in a plastic queen cage & stuffed two small candy marshmellows into the cage entrance. Then I drove back to the trap-out bait hive & put the cage in the middle of the bottom board of this queenless hive. I didn't put the cage between two frames.
After about a 15 minute period, I noticed the bees had stirred up into a feeding frenzy. I noticed a few were fighting with each other.
Despite all this I decided to leave the queen cage in, hoping she would help calm down the frenzy.
The homeowner for the trap-out e-mailed me this morning reporting the empty queen cage was found on the ground in front of the hive. She said there were about 30-50 dead bees littering the ground. She said late yesterday, she saw the queen cage just peeking out from the bottom board entrance.
It is clear to me the hive underwent a robbing situation with itself, which is very odd. Granted, this is a cone-trapout. The vast majority of the bees had seemed to adopt the bait hive, there was a cluster of maybe 50-100 bees still residual near the screen cone.
I feel the outlook for my queen, a $25 SMR Italian hybrid, is grim. I can't imagine they accepted her in just 36-48 hours.
Sometimes the bees are pretty easy to predict, and other times (like this) they are not. But, I chalk a lot of this up to my inexperience. In hindsight, I would've taken that queen cage the heck outta there. This learning thing is costing me money!