[Harold]

This year I built myself an 4 frame observation hive to see what goes on in my hives.
First I took some frames of brood and bees and some frames of honey.
And a frame with 2 swarm cells on it. Then I put this in my honey house with
An opening to the outside. First thing the bees done was to cut a hole in the side
Of both swarm cells and remove the dead queen, so much for that.
Next I got a new Queen, put the queen cage in the hive for 3 days then removed the plug
The Queen ran down the frame. The bees seen to except her they .
The next day I observed a cluster of bees on the bottom it looked like a yellow jacket
Had gotten in there. After a closer look , I see this was my new Queen
I have heard of balling the Queen, I Assume this is what happened .
My question is why do they do this? And how can you be sure this don’t happen
When you requeen a hive in your yard.

Harold

 

[drlonzo]

Well it sounds as if you have one of two problems..

1. You have a queen already in the hive somewhere.
2. You got your frames from a hive that was under control of laying workers.

Now for #1 to be true - Basically you said you put frames in with swarm cells. This is something that will happen alot as new queens are hard to spot. You probably have a Virgin queen in the hive. They tend to be mean to other queen cells and queens. Killing them all.

2. Since you had frames with swarm cells on it, this is not a likely cause at all. Most laying worker hives don't have swarm cells that i'm aware of due to the fact that laying workers can only lay drone eggs. So with that said, this isn't an option at all.

So that leaves us with this. #1 is your most likely cause of the problem. There was probably a virgin queen on the frames you put into the hive.

 

[WBVC]

If you have a virgin Queen in there once she is mated and laying you are good to go.

 

[Harold]

:applause:Thanks
I will just let go and see what happens. That is the reason I made this observation hive.
If it don't make it I'll start over next year.
This was meant to be a learning process.
I believe it is working. :applause: