Advice for unexpected supercedure queen seen alongside her mother

[Brad L.]

Unexpected find of supercedure new queen alongside her mother. Would the new queen eventually have killed the mother? We marked the new queen and moved her to a nuc with some frames of brood and open cells. We are assuming she is mated, time will tell. There appeared to be a good bit of brood and eggs in the original hive. Hindsight tells us we should have moved the old queen out (which she truly was aging and laying less eggs). If the new queen indeed is laying in the nuc, how do we put her back in the original hive? We've never requeened before. Do we remove the old queen and put the new queen in a queen cage with candy? Maybe we should have closed up the hive and let nature do it's thing. Your advice is welcomed!

[rweakley]

bottom line is you should have left the new queen in the old hive along with the old queen. In a situation like that, the bees know best. The old queen was failing so they made a new one. The old and new would probably work along side with no problems till the old dies. The old is producing less and less phermone so isn't a threat to the new queen. Now you will probably have to pull the old queen out and introduce new queen with a queen cage of some sort. You could try a news paper combine with a box on top of old hive.

[whix]

What a great and rare find.
Put the new queen in the hive and move the old one out. Look after her, she is worth her weight in gold. Get her to make new queens and keep taking them out until she finally dies. These new queens will hopefully have her genes and when they start to fail the bees don't swarm they replace her.
Read this page http://www.gbbg.net/longevity.html

[Brad L.]

Thank you Rod and whixen. We really appreciate the advice, and options. This is our third year and never a dull moment :-)