Queenless Hive

[monkeyfish]

Greetings,

Well, it's been 2 weeks since the swarm <which left the area after 4 days> and checking today shows no sign of a new queen. No brood, lots of empty cells in the deeps and no queen cells. I did see about 5 queen cells last week, but now, no sign of them!

Should I continue to wait or order a new queen?

Thanks,
~Scott

[Anonymous]

it takes 13 days from egg to emergence of a new queen and another 10 with good weather to begin to lay. be patient!

[monkeyfish]

If the queen cells I saw a week ago did indeed hatch a queen, is it normal that these cells are removed afterwards? There are none there now which is the reason for my concern or 'impatience' as you put it.

I may be waiting needlessly, when I should be taking some other action.

~SFP

[Anonymous]

After the first virgin queen hatches she will normally chew a hole in the other queen cells and sting the other queens to death. After she does this the worker bees tear down the queen cells and remove the dead queens to make use of the cells.

If the last day you saw the queen cells happened to be the day that the queen hatched, then you can expect her to start laying in 8 to 12 days depending on weather. If she happened to hatch the day before you got into the hive again and saw no queen cells then you may have to wait 8 to 10 days beyond that.

If you have another hive that you can take a frame of eggs and young larvae from I would suggest you put it in the hive immediately. If the workers start building queen cells on it within 24 hours then you do not have a queen in the hive at this time and should order a replacement pronto. If they don't start building queen cells on the frame then there is definitely a queen already there and all you can do is wait to see if she will start laying.

[monkeyfish]

Thankyou for this good information!
I don't have a second hive, but will watch this one closely for further developments.