Fuzzy Queen

[Solomon Parker]

I inspected my hives today. One queen I noticed was rather fuzzy. I was laid up after surgery the end of last summer, so I didn't get into the hives for several months. This hive used to be pretty hot, but was just fine today.

My hypothesis is that the old hot queen was superceded last summer and this queen is still fuzzy because she's only a few months old.

Does this sound like an accurate assessment of the facts?

[Velbert]

I will venture to say it is a more recently hatched queen Just in the last few days more than likely if it is that fuzzy

[Solomon Parker]

With the brood pattern I saw, impossible. Additionally, we don't have drones here yet.

[Velbert]

May Be your eye sight is better than mine, I have some queen in my mini mating nuc that was raised last fall the middle of October that never started laying they got mated but never seen any brood until about 30 days ago so this makes them about 4 months old and i don't see that fuzzy look

There don't have to bee drones in the hive for them to raise a queen
and Just because you have brood does not mean she had laid all of them

and if there happen to be a few drone that was carried over in a winter cluster they could mate

In the middle of march was getting read a cell Starter/Finisher I found the queen and put her in the bottom about the 3 frame in checking but i decided to check the rest of the frames and found another Queen in the second deep that would sure of messed up things always go through all your fame even after finding what you think is the only queen.

And in a few days 4-5 ck and make sure there is no newly laid eggs in the upper box where they are to start/Finish your queen cell if so you either have a bad queen excluder or you got a queen up top.

[Solomon Parker]

Never mind, this is going nowhere.

[Michael Bush]

They are fuzzy when they first emerge. They get so much attention that they are not fuzzy for very long.