[d.justins]

Hey yinz guys.

I'm 24 year old male in the ghetto eastside of pittsburgh. I've been thinking about beekeeping for over two years now and this year the chance arose. I beelined a hive in a bee tree a few houses down from mine. I got permission of the owner and extracted the hive with success. What an awesome experience. Filmed it in HD as well. Anyways, The hive i pulled has a nice (and well-disoriented) queen. I caught her walking around the top bars of the hive today seemingly not knowing what to do. However, i do have a first question. I've noticed there are drones about (it's that time of year) and there were a few queen cells on the comb that i pulled. (I kept all of the comb and wired it into frames. My question is, there seems to be a few other virginesqe queens roaming about the outside. Should i let them supersede? There was alot of brood in many stages and there were alot of reserves for how small the cavity was they were in. I'm affraid the queen might have got too disoriented during the move and my general thinking is to let nature take its course.

I would love to get some of yinzs' thoughts on this one.

 

[indios]

there can only be one queen in hive, are you sure those are queens??

 

[indypartridge]

There is usually only one queen. With the weather we've had the last week, I wouldn't be surprised to see virgins. We're at that start of swarm season, and we've had cool, rainy weather for several days. Although a swarm usually leaves right before the new queen emerges, a few days of rain can mess up their departure date and result in more than one queen being in the hive for a time.

 

[d.justins]

Yes, i'm sure they are queens. They're not laying queens... there are two of them.

When i removed them from the tree, most of the pre-swarming signs were there. I'm not surprised either because they had a very small space in the cavity. So much so that even during the night the bees were bearding outside of the entrance.

I'm thinking they were very near swarm, but didn't get the chance because of the last week of rain. So, the laying queen is inside, and the two non-laying queens were hanging around the outside (during the day, it's raining now so they're not outside anymore. I'm not sure if they went in or left).

I think i'm just going to let things play out. I'm going to give them some time to establish themselves before i go poking around in the new hive.

I guess my question is, how detrimental to the colony would two queens fighting be? I know that it is undesirable for new queens to develop and throw off the hive development, but wouldn't this be something similar to re-queening?

 

[AmericasBeekeeper]

Welcome, they are free bees. If you lose some to swarms, you still have a free hive. You might catch the swarm too.