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Think i may have a problem

2K views 6 replies 5 participants last post by  mark williams 
#1 ·
A couple of weeks ago we opened one of our hives and found the hive had started producinging queen cells. We thought they were getting ready to swarm. it was a very stong hive. yesterday we opened it up again to do a split and there were still queen cells, sealed brood but no unsealed brood.Have we lost our queen? We had three hives last year. One we couldnt keep a queen in. one of the others we had to queen this spring. Seems in my area all the beekeepers i know lost a lot of queens. one i know had 10 hives and lost 8 queens. Is there something killing queens now.I would appreciate any help you could offer.

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#2 ·
When the bees are unhappy with the current conditions they are like most creatures, they blame the "leader". Maybe the drought or other conditions have caused them to be unhappy enough to supercede the queen. This is one of the reasons I don't destroy queen cells when I find them. They may not be swarm cells. They may be supercedure cells. Even If I don't want a permanant split I'd take the existing queen and a little of everything (emerging brood, sealed brood, open brood eggs etc.) and put them in another hive. After the original hive has had time for the queen there to start laying and doing well, I'd combine them (unless you want another hive). In this case, if the old queen isn't that old (less than two years) I might just leave her when I do the combine. Often both queens will lay and do fine until the honey flow falls off and then the bees will usually get rid of the old one.

I'd blame the weather and supercedure. Queens don't have that many other natural enmeies.
 
#4 ·
The hive is italian and we dont have any larva or eggs. We thought maybe they had already had a queen emerge and that was the reason for no unsealed brood and eggs. We cant figure out why they didn,t raise a new queen if they had one laying good eggs. There are a few queen cells uncapped no egg no royal jelly, nothing. We were considering getting a queen and putting her in a release cage to see if any for a week to see if any eggs show up. Still not sure what to do.

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#5 ·
I would get a queen and put her through regular introduction and once she is released destroy the queens cells.

If all goes well that should take care of your problem. You need to act soon, in order to prevent a worker from starting to lay. Once that happens you have a whole different set of varialbes.

Thesurveyor
 
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