Queens - will the hive always make a new one

[Dan. NY]

What I mean is if a beek opens up a hive and sees spotty brood, few eggs, drone mixed in.. These are all things I have read and been taught are signs of a failing queen. My question is... does the hive also recognize this and always make a new queen? Sometimes? Often?? Never?? I am guessing there is no absolute but generally they will see and make a new queen? Thanks.

[geebob]

Seldom wasn't on your list, but that's the one I'd choose from my experience. I think that the bees just have different priorities and survival mechanisms, and what might be a bad queen for us (bad brood pattern, heavy drone mix) could be a great queen for them (good scent, loaded with eggs). I don't think they know that we want them to produce a huge honey crop.

[Vance G]

The bees usually attempt to, but may fail to raise a quality queen. It is safer to buy one or at least take a frame of brood from a prosperous neighbor so they have more options. A lot of hives go queenless either from queen failure or failure to raise a queen during swarming.

[Charlie B]

Vance is right. Usually my hives will raise a new queen, the problem here is the queen doesn't mate properly due to fog and wind. Always your best bet to intro a mated queen.

[NasalSponge]

Never say never or always when it comes to bees!!

[blueskydixon]

Yep, I have a hive that build a supercedure cell, so I took the queen out (6/15). The nuc balled the queen, so I moved that QC frame to nuc (6/22) so I could try my hand at grafting. On 6/22 none took, then 6/23 two took and 6/24 1 took. I went back in 6/29, peeked, all fine. 7/2, went to split them up and leave one behind, the last one was dissolved, one opened from the side and I took one. The one I took never hatched. I've not found a queen, but yesterday, there on a frame is a nicely capped queen cell. SO WHERE did the egg come from? The grafts should've hatch 7/5, this is a capped QC, about 8 days. It just baffles me.

[iahawk]

Often the colony will make a new queen, but not always. I have one hive now that, unfortunately, I allowed to become honey bound. It had a great laying queen early this year, and though I cleared out some frames to give her room to lay and added two medium supers, either she failed, swarmed while I was out of town for a week early June, or she is still around but just nowhere to lay. I'll put in a frame with young larva/eggs once weekly for several weeks and hopefully, if there is no queen, they will make one from one of those.