two queens in one hive after unifying two problematic hives

[rand]

Hi,
I had weird situation that i never saw.....

Last week i unifyed two hives - one with queen that stoped laying one month ago
and one that i tried to let them raise queen with no success.

After one week i checked and was very supprised to see that
there is a laying queen in the second floor and the old
queen from the original hive that stoped laying.

There was a queen excluder between the floors so they couldn't
hurt each other. I took off the failed queen and move to the bottom the new good one.

My questions:
1. How come, the bees didn't tried to kill the opponent queens?

2. After i took off the faield queen, can her bees hurt the queen i left?


Thanks alot, Randi

[Vance G]

I would think that if they were going to hurt the young or old queen, they would have done it by now. Failed queens don't seem to arouse much aggression. I think they no longer are putting out queen pheromones and just smell like another bee.

[Michael Bush]

>1. How come, the bees didn't tried to kill the opponent queens?

Worker bees are not responsible to eliminate excess queens. The queens usually work this out and the workers let them or encourage them.