What is the least amount of bees you have seen turn into a strong colony?

[Beehaive]

I have a observation hive with a fistfull of bees and a non laying queen. Is it even worth trying to requeen these girls?

[sammyjay]

I have heard of people turning 50 bees and a queen cell into a thriving colony. However, it takes lots of work and I'm not sure if you could do it this late in the year.


Nathan

[Charlie B]

The problem is your non laying queen. I would combine them.

[Beehaive]

The problem is your non laying queen. I would combine them.

What if I purchased a new queen? Can bees be to old ( with a new bought queen) to start a colony. would they take care of the brood?

[sammyjay]

They probably aren't too old to feed brood, although their royal jelly production might not be the best anymore, but I'm not sure if you could get them to raise enough brood before winter hits. I'm not sure if anyone sells queens this late in the year.


Nathan

[ralittlefield]

I caught a swarm this year that was about the size of a tennis ball and they have done well, but I got a good queen with them, and added a couple of frames of brood with bees. Unless you have resources to draw from, that is not the same as your situation.

[beedeetee]

I had a hive dwindle down to a queen and maybe a hundred bees one time. It came out of winter very small and really couldn't raise enough brood to grow. I was just going to just shake it out, but at the same time I had several hives ready to swarm that I wanted to take capped brood from. But I didn't have a place, with a queen, to put them. So I put 3-4 frames of emerging and capped brood in the hive. Man...she must have been holding the eggs in. That hive exploded and became one of my best hives of the year. So you never know.

[Adrian Quiney WI]

I had a similar experience to beedeetee the year before last. I added a frame of emerging bees and attached bees to a tennis ball cluster of bees in the spring on a warm day. My queen had started laying, but she was restricted by the lack of bees to cover the brood - so much so that she was laying 2-3 eggs in some cells. After I added the frame of bees she took off, and I got a decent honey crop from the hive.

[Mike Gillmore]

Behaive,
Was the queen laying when you put them into the observation hive? Just wondering if she possibly shut down egg laying. It's that time of year.

[rwurster]

Caught a swarm the size of a plum, gave them a frame that was 1/4 filled with brood/eggs if they needed to make a queen and they ended up drawing out 2 deeps by the end of the summer.

[Beehaive]

Behaive,
Was the queen laying when you put them into the observation hive? Just wondering if she possibly shut down egg laying. It's that time of year.

Yes she was, just a small pattern. The bees came from a hive that was getting robbed out so I decided to move them to a observation hive as sort of an experment.