[johng]

Is there an easy way to tell if a queen has been mated. I checked my hives the other day and found 2 new queens one was a walk away split, and one was a small swarm I caught. I did not get the queen so I gave them a queen cell and now they have a queen but, can I tell if she is mated?

If they turn out to be drone layers, will they lay eggs in worker brood? Or will the eggs be in Drone brood. My walk away split has eggs in worker brood. It is still alittle early to say on the swarm hive yet.

What got me to wondering was some reading I was doing on queen piping. It said mostly virgins do this. Did I just miss read that. Cause several queens were doing this the other day.

 

[vanwinkeld]

you have to wait until eggs are present to know whether she is mated then time will tell again on the success of the mating. she will be a drone layer if she never actually mates with a drone and she will lay unfertilized eggs in worker cells that will then turn into drones. 2 weeks after queen emergence from her cell is usually enough time to determine if she is viable then give it a month to determine if she is a drone layer. hopefully there are lots of drones in the area with good genetics for her to mate with otherwise you'll know soon enough. not sure about the piping--i have heard mated queens pipe especially when they were caged and several feet from their hive.