[bushpilot]

Today I checked my resource hive (4 over 4, deeps) for queenrightness. It is 22 days since capped queen cells and lack of eggs indicated queenlessness.

In the bottom box, 2nd frame I pulled had eggs, properly laid (not LW). Cool, they are queenright, so I start putting it back together. I saw the queen on that frame as I was putting it back in.

The top box was off to the side, sitting on the top cover. I decided to take a peek at it, to see if there was any brood/egg there. What? A second queen, a bit smaller than the first, but definately a queen. Pondering that, I set that frame aside, and pulled another from the top box. And yet another small queen!

Not knowing what to do, I put it all back together, to let them sort it out. In hindsight, maybe I should have dispatched the two smaller queens, but I cannot say for sure which one was laying.

Thoughts?

 

[LAlldredge]

You did the right thing. When in doubt the bees are the best arbiters of the situation.

 

[GregV]

.....
Thoughts?

I am very glad I made few foam mini-nucs - these work great as parking places for queens while taking minimal resources.
What used to take me a whole full-size nuc, now a cup of bees can do.
Using a full size nuc (full-size hive - worse yet) is expensive, to just hold a dark-horse/virgin queen

Unsure if you have the benefit of having mini nucs or a similar compact equipment, but I'd pull those "small" queens into holding nucs and let them possibly mate and then make my calls on which ones to keep.
Great to make informed decisions.

I now need more mating nucs - ALL are used up and I am out.
One is used a parking place for a backup mated queen.

 

[bushpilot]

No mating nucs here, and for that matter no spare nucs right now either!

I'll look into mating nucs to see if they fit into my program.

 

[bushpilot]

The rest of the story -

The hive went queenless. On Sunday I combined it together with the other side of the double nuc, making a single colony in full size equipment.

 

[Gray Goose]

bushpilot

that is odd,, I would have left it, or pulled one if I needed it elsewhere. Smallish ones could have been virgins, killed the laying queen then failed to return from mating.

I also Had a double NUC with one side LW, combined it seemed to work.

GG

 

[bushpilot]

Yeah, I thought it odd as well. I likewise figured the small ones were probably virgins, I now think should have dispatched them.

I wonder if the larger queen could have swarmed? The population was diminished, but that was expected from the two periods of queenlessness.

 

[Gray Goose]

Yeah, I thought it odd as well. I likewise figured the small ones were probably virgins, I now think should have dispatched them.

I wonder if the larger queen could have swarmed? The population was diminished, but that was expected from the two periods of queenlessness.

Swarming is also a valid option