I was preparing my Cloake board for tomorrows graft. When I located the queen, I noticed her wings looked chewed and tattered. I raised this queen this year from a swarm cell. She is laying very well. Is chewing off a queen's wing normal behavior?
Do your queen's wings look something like this? I hadn't noticed wings like that either. I posted in this thread about it. Sometimes those mating flights are hard on the queens.
I've seen queens with no wings in hives that have more than one queen. It's always the older of the 2 that is wingless seems that the older queen is superceded but isn't killed. I would have a look for another younger queen in that hive.
I split the hives into 2-3 nucs so if there was a second queen I'm not sure where she may have ended up.
In another yard a nuc had a queen missing 2 legs on one side and my thinking was in line with yours that the hive must have had two queens and I had kept the younger queen on the original stand.
My parents were down for Mother's day and while they were here, it was kind of late, so my dad and I walked out just to take a glance at the hives. We were not planning on doing and inspection or anything, just wanted to view them from a far. While we are watching some late bees come and go, I look down and saw a queen crawling on the ground near us, away from all the hives. Her wing on one side completely removed and a the other wing was almost gone as well. I just figured that they wanted her replaced, but didn't want to swarm, so the took her wings and kicked her out, but I don't know that for a fact or anything.
Frazzle I noticed the exact same thing earlier this spring. I had a really big black queen that was mated last spring. Well this spring I noticed her in the hive and she had absolutely no wings at all, she appeared healthy other than that and was still laying well. A coupld frames over I found another laying queen she was a normal blonde color queen. Both queens lived together for over a month before I split the hive taking one of the queens.
I have a queen just like that too. The bees are making queen cells in that hive. It is my most productive hive this year so I am planning on removing her and putting in a queen from a nuc. I don't want to risk swarming or lose time waiting for a new one to come on line.
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