Requeening question

**SG12** · 09-17-2011, 07:06 PM

After requeening two hives (my first attempt at this), I left them alone for a week, then went in this morning to check and see if the new queens had been released from their cages. The first hive was just fine; the queen was released, and I could even see the her wandering about on a frame.

The second queen had also been released, but there were four large queen cells hanging from the bottom of one of the frames, and I'm pretty sure there were others. These cells weren't capped, but looked pretty advanced. There were no queen cells in the hive prior to requeening.

Is this a good indication that the second queen wasn't accepted? If so, will they have time to raise their own queen this fall?

**franktrujillo** · 09-17-2011, 07:27 PM

that depends on your first frost and is there drones in the area,if so they should be fine

**Charlie B** · 09-17-2011, 08:43 PM

See if you can find the second queen again or look on the bottom board or in front of your hive for her body. How long were they queenless before you placed the queen cage inside?

**SG12** · 09-18-2011, 12:01 PM

They were queenless for a day. I checked in front of the hive, but couldn't see any dead bees at all on the ground, much less the queen. I'll go back into the hive this afternoon if the rain holds off.

**guyross** · 09-18-2011, 12:13 PM

Were there any sign of eggs or larva in the hive with queen cells? I have something similar going in a split with a new queen. I removed cells on my last two inspections. The new queen appears to be doing a good job to me but I'm not running the colony.

**SG12** · 09-18-2011, 04:26 PM

I checked again late this afternoon. I didn't see the queen; I saw capped drone & worker brood, but no uncapped larvae. I'm pretty sure there were no eggs, either, although they're on Permacomb and the light was bad, so it would be easy to miss those. Also, two of the queen cells which I noticed yesterday are now capped.

**guyross** · 09-18-2011, 06:34 PM

Just from a beeks calcuations your at least sixteen days from those cells hatching or emerging. We had some new queens free mate last week and I thought it was a miricle this late. If I could I would find a mated queen or maybe combine the queenless hive with some weaker hives you might have. Again I a new beek.

**Charlie B** · 09-19-2011, 12:34 AM

If the queen cells are hanging from the bottom of the frames, that means they're swarm cells. I think you my have pinched the old queen while they were thinking about swarming. Is it possible you might have mistaken a beginning swarm cell for bottom frame burr comb earlier? If they had swarm cells started and you introduced a new queen, they may not have accepted her. This is just a guess from the information you provided.

Anyway, what you can do now is limited to waiting for eggs from a queen either you introduced or one that your colony makes or combine with another hive. Trying to intro another mated queen could work but you have to cut out all those queen cells. You can do this simple queen test http://vimeo.com/21327364 to make sure you're really queenless if you decide to intro another queen.