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I did a tree cut out 2 weeks ago. Very gentle, local, survivor bees and what I hoped to base the genetics of my apiary from. One week ago they had 2 capped and 2 uncapped queen cells. I peaked in 2 days ago and all the queen cells are gone. Like they never were. Is it possible the virgin queen already hatched and they removed the cells? My gut feeling is they did not raise a queen.
I am going to wait till tuesday (I leave for a week the next day) then look for the queen. If they did, fine. all is good. but if not I have some options.
Option 1. I have a friend with a hive of local survivor bees about a mile from me. Her hive was split last week. I talked to her and she said I could look in on tuesday and see how many queen cells the split has made. If there are extra I could take either a cell or possibly a frame and put them into my hive.
Option 2 if there are no extra cells in the split I might buy a frame of eggs larvae and let my hive try again to raise a queen.
option 3 I have 2 nucs scheduled for delivery on sat the 26th. Since I am gone that week a local beek is picking up my nucs and installing them for me. I could simply combine the nuc with the queenless colony. But with this option I lose the ability to keep the genetics I want.
What would you recommend? I have to have this sorted before I leave for a month on May 4th. Any suggested are appreciated.
I am going to wait till tuesday (I leave for a week the next day) then look for the queen. If they did, fine. all is good. but if not I have some options.
Option 1. I have a friend with a hive of local survivor bees about a mile from me. Her hive was split last week. I talked to her and she said I could look in on tuesday and see how many queen cells the split has made. If there are extra I could take either a cell or possibly a frame and put them into my hive.
Option 2 if there are no extra cells in the split I might buy a frame of eggs larvae and let my hive try again to raise a queen.
option 3 I have 2 nucs scheduled for delivery on sat the 26th. Since I am gone that week a local beek is picking up my nucs and installing them for me. I could simply combine the nuc with the queenless colony. But with this option I lose the ability to keep the genetics I want.
What would you recommend? I have to have this sorted before I leave for a month on May 4th. Any suggested are appreciated.