New Queen or not?

[D Coates]

I had a swarm I captured a couple of weeks ago. By luck I was in the process of grafting queens. I had a few Q cells left over and thought I would put one in this captured swarm once I removed the original queen. I looked for her twice but couldn't find her and this hive was acting queenless. I went ahead and put a queen cell in there thinking that I'd run the risk as I didn't have any other hive I could put that Q cell in anyway. Two days later I found the queen cell had been opened from the inside indicating (to me) that she successfully emerged.

I checked that swarn nuc and another nuc yesterday (10 days after I put ripe Q cells in both of them). In the swarm nuc there was a very large dark brown queen and quite a few eggs (no larva). She honestly stood out like a sore thumb as the rest of the hive is very lightly color. In the other hive, that I did remove the queen from, I found no eggs nor queen but the hive was acting like there was a queen there.

Considering one hive already has a laying queen and the other doesn't what are the chances the queen I found laying in the swarm nuc is the original queen that I may have missed? I figured she'd kill the Q cell ASAP if she was in there. I ask this as I want to make sure that my nucs at least have fresh queens.

Any help is appreciated

Drew

[fish_stix]

Wait a while longer! The bees and especially the queens, don't always read the beekeeping books and may very well be on a different schedule than the ones published. Last batch of splits we made in June some of the queens were laying within a week after emerging and some took 3 weeks. We just made 30 more Sunday and won't check them until next week.