OK, I have 2 production hives and 7 double deep nuc's. It was in the 70's yesterday here in SC, so I cracked the hives to have a peek. One of the double deep production hives was aggressive and I could not validate it was queen right. Being aggressive, I am sure it is queenless. Also one my Nuc's I believe to be queenless as there was a recently hatched queen cell and no signs of a laying queen. So I have two questions
1) If there is a virgin queen in the nuc, will she do a mating flight in the spring or is she doomed to laying drone's forever? There are no drones this time of the year!
2) If I assume I want to re-queen my double deep production hive with a queen from one of my nuc's, should I do it now or in the spring? I would pull a queen from a nuc and then combine the donor nuc with another nuc and have another production hive for the spring
I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts
1) If there is a virgin queen in the nuc, will she do a mating flight in the spring or is she doomed to laying drone's forever? There are no drones this time of the year!
2) If I assume I want to re-queen my double deep production hive with a queen from one of my nuc's, should I do it now or in the spring? I would pull a queen from a nuc and then combine the donor nuc with another nuc and have another production hive for the spring
I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts