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31 Posts
Finally! Success!!
On March 2nd we did a cutout as a nasty cold front started moving in. We didn't realize that it was going to get so cold so quickly! There were lots of drones in this hive and I also saw a few queen cells. After getting them set up in their new home, I checked on them on March 15th and saw that a queen cell was open. A couple of days later, another check showed that the two remaining queen cells had been destroyed. On day 19 after the queen had emerged, I did another check to look for eggs. Nothing! At this point I was thinking that the queen had been killed during her virgin flight and I started a desperate search to buy a mated queen. Everyone is sold out. I then started checking with my bee group to see if anyone had a frame of eggs they could spare. I finally got a response from a member and he told me to check my hive one last time. If there weren't any eggs then he was going to give me a frame of eggs/brood to help me out. I checked my hive yesterday afternoon and some new comb they built is almost entirely filled with new eggs! It's as if the new queen wants nothing to do with laying her eggs in the old cutout comb. :scratch: What I find interesting is that they built new comb over the old comb on the same frame. There is bee space between the new and old comb. I have two frames of foundation in a Lang super that they haven't touched yet. I didn't see the queen but she could have been between the new and old comb-or I just don't know how to spot her yet.


On March 2nd we did a cutout as a nasty cold front started moving in. We didn't realize that it was going to get so cold so quickly! There were lots of drones in this hive and I also saw a few queen cells. After getting them set up in their new home, I checked on them on March 15th and saw that a queen cell was open. A couple of days later, another check showed that the two remaining queen cells had been destroyed. On day 19 after the queen had emerged, I did another check to look for eggs. Nothing! At this point I was thinking that the queen had been killed during her virgin flight and I started a desperate search to buy a mated queen. Everyone is sold out. I then started checking with my bee group to see if anyone had a frame of eggs they could spare. I finally got a response from a member and he told me to check my hive one last time. If there weren't any eggs then he was going to give me a frame of eggs/brood to help me out. I checked my hive yesterday afternoon and some new comb they built is almost entirely filled with new eggs! It's as if the new queen wants nothing to do with laying her eggs in the old cutout comb. :scratch: What I find interesting is that they built new comb over the old comb on the same frame. There is bee space between the new and old comb. I have two frames of foundation in a Lang super that they haven't touched yet. I didn't see the queen but she could have been between the new and old comb-or I just don't know how to spot her yet.

