[Levi's Bees]

has any 1 had this happen before and has she came back??? after 2 1/2 days the candy was only half way threw so i opened the end cork and bammmm she was flying away in circles. seen the green color just as she hit my veil . any thoughts to ease my mind.

 

[drlonzo]

I don't know about easing your mind on this, however i've heard of other queens doing this, then flying back into the hive. The only way to know for sure is to go back out in the morning and do a check to see if you can find her or eggs. If not, i'd go ahead and find another queen.

 

[kilocharlie]

1) Always use a queen muff.

2) They often come back. Sometimes they even go out and mate some more, especially I.I. queens.

 

[Levi's Bees]

? queen muff

 

[WBVC]

1) Always use a queen muff.

2) They often come back. Sometimes they even go out and mate some more, especially I.I. queens.

Yes...but don't you then have to get it out of the muff? You can't hold it forever

 

[challenger]

I've had several fly away. Mainly because I am an idiot and I don't learn from mistakes.
I had one fly away last PM. It was a laying queen and she took off as I was getting ready to mark it. Laying Queens won't fly far unless they are getting ready to swarm so this one fell out of the air about 3 feet from me. I picked it up and finished.
A couple of weeks ago I did a similar thing trying to mark a queen except this one disappeared. Two days later it was in the hive again. I try to remember to wait until the Queens I'm marking are laying well before I expose them to the open air just for this reason. I've probably had a total of 5 or 6 "get loose" and I've said bye bye to at least two that I can recall.
I do however find other ways to screw up my queen supply. Yesterday I was in a hive and saw a green queen in the top box. This box was on the ground btw. I started poking around in the bottom box looking for a frame to graft from and I saw another green queen. This one must have gotten into the hive when I put a frame of brood in it after having a take out. Obviously I had checked the frame but it was the only way to explain it. I took this queen and put it into a queenless nuc using newspaper and bees frames etc. I went back to put this have back together and couldn't find the Queen that I first found. It was so frustrating. I looked again today and still didn't see this queen but I also didn't see any queen cells started which is very odd considering there is plenty of open brood and I've never had a hive go queenless with them starting emergency cells within hours so I have no idea what is going on. In addition I checked the nuc with queen #2 that I combined and could find it either. The paper was still completely in tact and no bee from the top going into the bottom or vise versa. I have no idea about this one either and it was the best queen I've had. The nuc it came from is (was) awesome. The bees are SHB killers and very healthy. Who knows? Times like these make me wonder how and why I keep at this.