[catbackr]

I have a couple of queenless hives and i thought that I would graft some young larva from another hive into queen cups and put them in. I did so, but in both hives the bees cleaned out the cups and didn't try to raise an emergency queen. Should that have worked? If it should have, what things would cause it to go bad?

 

[djei5]

Queen cups? Please elaborate. Did you introduce a frame of queen cups? You simply need to introduce a frame of brood that has eggs or larvae three days old or younger. They will make a new queen, you may need to do this once a week until they do.

 

[catbackr]

i put in a frame with 5 queen cups that i use in my normal queen raising activity. if i would have had extra brood frames i would have done as you suggested. the question is why didnt the cups work.

 

[djei5]

Could be any number of reasons. Have you grafted before this with success?
Are you sure there is no queen?
Is there a laying worker?

You didnt mention exactly how many hives you had. If you have no resources, you would be better off trying to locate a couple of mated queens.
It would save you a month at the least in waiting for a queen to grow out of resources,and mating successfully.

 

[kilocharlie]

How long were they queenless? A grafted queen cell cup sometimes works, but not every time. A frame of open brood with eggs and young larvae usually works better.

Is this the best solution? NO WAY! Even introducing a virgin queen sets them back 1 or 2 weeks. Introducing a mated queen in a Laidlaw cage gets her accepted as soon as she starts laying eggs and gets them back in the game making bees and honey pronto!