[HOBBEEZ APIARY]

I asked this in my 10 frame split thread at the end but thought it might bee more apropriate to start another thread for search reasons.

I split two 10 frame hives and in both the queenless splits with the queen cell cups the bees emptied the cups of all larva????

Anybody know why?

 

[GaryG74]

Could there possibly be virgin queens in them? Sometimes there are multiple queens (mother and daughters) in hives. The mother queen gets superseded or leaves with a swarm, leaving the daughter to take her place. Many times bee keeper looking for the queen stops as soon as they find a queen. If they kept looking they may find one or more additional queens. Any eggs yet? I have captured swarms with multiple queens.

 

[HOBBEEZ APIARY]

I searched pretty good on both hives for a queen before picking frames. So I kinda doubt there is a queen in there. I forgot to mention that both hives are different. One was Russian the other Italian and want to do a Saskatras next but want to see a queen first and why the cups got emptied out. Next time I'll have a real close look for a queen.As far as eggs I have not seen any. Thanks for your input.

 

[drlonzo]

Thinking about your question and I can think of a couple reasons at the moment for the bees to do what they did. If you did the splits on these hives after the queen cells were capped, during the period of time where the cells shouldn't be moved, it could have caused the developing queens to die in the cells. Then being hygenic bees, they removed the dead. Now for the second reason.. If these bees are hygenic, and i know russians are as I have many colonies, if they sense that there were varroa in the cells with the queens being made, they would do as normal and rip it open and remove the pupa and mites.. Then of course there is always the off chance that a virgin queen was loose and just ripped them down.. Only way to tell is give the hive about 2 weeks and see if there are any eggs. If not, buy a new queen or add eggs from the parent hive and allow them to make their own..

 

[HOBBEEZ APIARY]

Thinking about your question and I can think of a couple reasons at the moment for the bees to do what they did. If you did the splits on these hives after the queen cells were capped, during the period of time where the cells shouldn't be moved, it could have caused the developing queens to die in the cells. Then being hygenic bees, they removed the dead. Now for the second reason.. If these bees are hygenic, and i know russians are as I have many colonies, if they sense that there were varroa in the cells with the queens being made, they would do as normal and rip it open and remove the pupa and mites.. Then of course there is always the off chance that a virgin queen was loose and just ripped them down.. Only way to tell is give the hive about 2 weeks and see if there are any eggs. If not, buy a new queen or add eggs from the parent hive and allow them to make their own..

I added 5 clean frames then the queen cell cups then the eggs. Did not know you could put queen cell cups in a ten frames with a queen already?
I guess ill wait 2 weeks for eggs if not try the queen cell cups again.
Thanks for the input

 

[HOBBEEZ APIARY]

Well it turns out there was no queen because they have made a queen cell at the bottom of a brood frame on booth splits. I can't figure out why they dumped the eggs out. I recently did another split with queen cell cups, we'll see what happens there. All new cups new tools new everything, can't see contamination of equipment.

 

[HOBBEEZ APIARY]

I just checked out to see if any queens have been started and 40% of the queen cells have been made. and still can't figure out why they rejected the first two.Maybe I just had bad luck or my skills grafting were not so good the first two times?
This time they started making comb all over the queen cell frame also???