Intercaste issues

[marathonmedic]

I think I have an intercaste queen hiding in my hive.

I have a hive that was started this spring with a marked queen. A few weeks ago I noticed the hive was getting aggressive, was making queen cells and didn't have an identifiable queen. I removed the queen cells and 9 days ago I introduced a new queen in the usual way (letting them chew through the bee candy) but she seems to have disappeared, too.

Today I went back through the hive. First, I moved the honey super from the brood super and started to sort through the brood super. There are a few larvae of various ages, some big and fat, others not even long enough to curl completely around the base of the cell. All in all I seem to have way too many empty cells right now. They did seem to have moved some honey from the brood chamber up to the honey chamber. The honey super had some honey, but again, lots of empty cells and fewer bees and a few queen cells (mostly in the middle of the frame).

No queen anywhere. I'm thinking I have a small intercaste queen that the hive is trying to replace. I would love to save them the time and introduce a new (more gentle) queen but I need to find the current one first.

Does anyone have any tips on how to find one of these? I've heard they can be quite tricky to locate. My current plan was to go back through the hive tomorrow. If I can't find the intercaste I will introduce the new queen that I already have and hope she lives. If not, I'll let the hive create a supercede queen then replace her if she's as mean as the current one.

Any suggestions on this? Thanks a ton.

[Joel]

You don't tell us how many queens cells (many mean likely swarm, few more likely emergency/supercedure) or how long since the last inspection (could you have killed her on your last visit?) which would help in diagnosing the problem. Was there any other brood in any phase of development (when was the queen last there?) and what did the stores look like. Is there honey being stored in the brood chamber where brood would normally be, is there pollen coming in and what about drone cells, many/few? How many frames of worker bees still in the hive? It may be a swarmed hive which failed to requeen or still requeening, it may be a killed queen with or without a laying worker or possibly a failed queen being supersceded. A little more info would help.

[BeeAware]

I had a few intercaste queens back when I used to try and rear queens by the emergency method. This sometimes forces the bees to use larvae that are too old or they are not able to properly feed them. For this reason, I believe emergency queens to be inferior and have stopped using this method. The best way I know of to find a queen in a populous hive is to shake the bees off all frames into an empty super which is placed on top of super with frames. Put an excluder between the two boxes and have a frame of brood in the lower one. The workers will go through the excluder into the lower box but the queen will remain on top of the excluder where she can be caught. I don't like to use this method because of time and labor, but sometimes (rarely, fortunately) it is the best way.

[marathonmedic]

The last time I remember seeing the marked queen was at least a few months ago. I thought her mark was coming off and was unable to find her on some subsequent inspections. Only in the last 6 weeks or so have they become quite agitated. I absolutely may have squished her but it's tough to pin down when they may have happened.

It's a brand new hive with virgin frames so they had to draw all the comb. Stores are much less than desired. All in all, I'd say I have about 1/2 of a deep super full of honey. It was originally located mainly in the brood box but this was their only box for the first few months of existance. Since then the honey is gradually working it's way up, much more so in the past few days.

I hadn't worried too much about queenlessness until about 3-4 weeks ago when I noted that I wasn't having much larvae. Lots of brood but not the different stages that you want to see. Now I do have some variety but the overall numbers are quite low. The entire hive has only a few hundred larvae at most right now.

I first started to notice the queen cells about 2-3 weeks ago but didn't realize what they were at the time. There have never been more than 6 and often there have been 3-4. At the time I suspected they may have been queen cells so I removed them to see if they would be replaced. When I did this they were full of white gel which I now recognize as royal jelly. That was ~2.5 weeks ago. Since then I've been in the hive 3-4 times and noted smaller queen cells that I would usually remove in an effort to help my newly introduced queen be accepted. (I'm usually only in the hive every 10 days or so, but the last few weeks have been a bit intense.)

Very few drone cells. I have plastic frames that are almost exclusively worker comb. In fact, I'm ordering a few drone frames since I've realized that they actually are important to the health of the hive. 20 frames total.

I do still have some pollen coming in on workers, but not a lot. I don't know about swarming but I haven't noticed a drastic drop in the number of bees I find and there are still a few frames with no comb. It seems like there is still room to grow.

Hope this extra info helps and thanks a ton for your help.