[WilliesHoneyCo]

Hi all,

I have had packages for many years now. Today almost 3 weeks after hiving them I checked on some and found that a few of them had no brood what so ever. Finding this odd I looked and found the queens. There was drawn comb and there were alot of eggs in good laying patterns. Its been on the cool side (60s) until late last week when it got to almost 80. Why would there only be eggs after so long? Brood disease of some type? The only thing I could think of is the queens were virgins and mated when it got warm last week.

Any Ideas?


Thanks,

Willie

 

[hotlanta_buckeye]

Willie, I have a similar situation in a package I installed earlier this month. The queen was released 17 days ago and has yet to lay an egg. I have read that if a virgin queen is held captive for more than a couple days before her mating flight she will only lay drones after being fertilized. So in your case, if your brood turns out to be drones, it would be logical to think that the queens were virgin. I've seen a lot of posts saying it could take up to 2 weeks for a package queen to start laying. Has anyone ever heard of one going for 3 weeks or longer?

 

[Michael Bush]

A queen has three weeks to get mated before she will turn into a drone layer.