[mixofsam]

Looking for some advice. One of my 3 pound packages that I installed about a week and half ago, seems to be queenless, there are only 2 frames of bees and I can't see any brood...period. I'm not sure what happened! I checked on this hive 4 days after I installed the package. She was out of her cage...but I did not see her at that time.

Here are the questions:

Should install 1-2 frames of bees from one of my other hives and introduce a new queen (which I can probably pick up mid next week)?

Should I see if I can get my hands on another package? Would there be any issue with "dumping" 2 pounds of bees(and queen) into this hive with the existing bees?

Other suggestions?
Thanks,
Chris

 

[Bens-Bees]

If it's me, I'd just toss in a couple frames of brood and eggs from an existing hive and let them do what they want with them. If they are queenless or the queen is a dud then they should make a new one from the eggs and I would forget about trying to get another queen for them... unless you don't have any drones yet.

 

[Carl F]

Two frames of bees sounds to me like the queen and a good part of your package took off. It sounds like maybe they absconded. Sometimes they leave if there's something they don't like about the hive or location. I would be inclined to try another package by itself and not combine it with the other two frames. Maybe take them and do a newspaper combine with the other hive before you hive the new package.