[c10250]

In short, my hive went queenless and it wasn't caught in time before the hive dwindled. I tried to introduce a new queen, and evidently she wasn't accepted because I can find no brood, eggs, or larvae after 14 days.

I checked for drone cells (laying worker) and found at most five drone cells in the whole hive (Probably dead brood, haven't been torn down?). You definitely have to look HARD to even find a drone cell.

I'm perplexed as to what might be going on here. I'm going to give up on this hive. I'm at my wits end.

I was thinking about doing a newspaper combine with a VERY healthy hive. I was going to work all the bees into a single deep and then put the deep onto the healthy hive. HOWEVER, I don't want to screw the healthy hive up. For example, what if they kill the queen since they evidently killed my introduced queen.

Any advise would be greatly appreciated. What would you do?

TIA,

Ken

 

[fish_stix]

Give them a frame of eggs/young larva from a good hive. Do that each week for a few weeks and see if they make cells. You may also have to give them a transfusion of capped brood with the adhering bees if they've dwindled way down. I'd be real hesitant to combine at this point. As you stated, they may kill your good queen. If that seems like too much work for this hive then just shake them out a little distance from other hives and remove the box so they can't return; they'll find their way to other hives and join them.

 

[D Coates]

I would do a combine at this point. The hive you have will abosorb them nicely and you may even get a boost of honey production. At the least, you could then split your remaining hive into two hives at a later date and introduce a new queen into the hive without a queen to get your numbers back up to 2.