[samF]

I have a heck of time getting queens mated here on the foggy coast of Northern California. Just when mating flight time is due, we get socked in for days on end. This year has been especially rough with fog followed by rain, returning to fog. It gets a bit better as summer moves on but not by much. Anyhow, I ended up with one out of four queens mated from splitting swarm cells. The lucky lady is unfortunately laying a fair number of drones in worker cells (also appears to be laying normal worker brood). In your experience, what is the likelihood of the bees superceding her and having a chance at a productive queen? Or best to pinch and move on? She did come from a desirable queen that I was hoping to keep her offspring. They’re in nuc box to play around with as another resource hive, so the hive’s fate isn’t critical to anything though I hate to see them struggle and dwindle if there’s slim chance of things correcting. I Find keeping a couple of nucs gives me my “bee fix” and keeps me from endlessly fiddling with my couple of production hives and the risks that go along with that.

 

[RBRamsey]

I believe the hive will eventually supercede her, but personally, I would not wait for them I would pinch and replace.

If you like the genetics, I would pinch her, wait 4 days and remove all queen cells, pull a frame of eggs from the mother queen, and let them try gain.

I think everyone should keep a nuc or 2 to use as problem solvers for there production hives. It is easy to pull frames from the nuc to boost a production hive, or pull the queen if needed. Let the nuc take the hit on rebuilding or requeening while the production hive is producing. I like to have 1 nuc per 10 hives as reserves.