[roger33]

I received my Queen from Beeweaver today and want to start the introduction process in the morning. The hive is actually a Nuc I got about 3 weeks ago that was infested with SHB. The beetles have been taken care of and the result is I only have 1 frame of drawn comb. It has some honey and pollen on it, but no brood. The other 9 frames are empty. I'm guessing there are only about 1-2000 bees in this hive and they have probably been queenless for 5-6 weeks. I heard it's harder to introduce a queen when the hive has been without one for a long period of time. Any suggestions for making the introduction successful? Should I put the cage in the hive with the cork in place for a few days first then remove it? I don't have a lot to work with. I have another nuc that the supplier replaced this one with but there's not enough brood frames to rob from. The queen was released from that one 2 days ago.

 

[katmike]

Sounds like you have a lot going against you. For starters, it sounds like they have too much space. I don't think you want so few bees in a 10-frame brood box. I'd put a divider in and reduce their area to 5 frames until they fill 80% of the frames. Too much space stresses them.

If you don't see any drone brood, you probably don't have a laying worker yet. But your population is so low that if you can't steal any more bees from another colony, you may as well combine with another colony (do a search on the newspaper method). You may have to just eat your new queen (not literally!).