? Still no queen?

[drmwarden]

I'm still having problems with the hive that I've been trying to start up this spring.  My old hive is going great: I requeened in April, and have just added my third super.  My new hive, however is not going so well.  I originally installed the package and queen the end of April.  When I did an inspection a couple of weeks later I could find no queen or brood.  This continued for two more weeks at which time I decided to re-queen.  I was never able to find a queen or brood on follow-up checks, so I put a couple of frames of capped brood from my old colony in and a week or so later installed yet another queen.  I checked the colony this weekend (one week after the new queen was released).  I could not find the queen (this one was marked)  and couldn't see any eggs, but there are still a fair number of bees in the hive, and one deep body has a lot of honey and pollen.  I think I'll just leave this one for a while and see what happens.  If there really is no queen I guess the bees will all eventually die and I'll try again next spring.

[Finsky]

There are alternatives.

Seems difficult, if bees are going to kill new queens or there is some kind of queen which is not able to lay eggs. .


1)  Take a fine day. Make a new hive. Put there a frame emerging bees and another frame little larvas. Move quite far that naughty hive and put the new one on it's place. Let bees fly to new hive.

Give also some brood to naughty hive. If it has a queen, it will hang on brood area when other bees go out and never come back. Very few bees will stay in old hive.  See what hey are.

 See, if they are going to raise queen cells. It takes 2 days to notice that.
When queen cell is capped, give to it new egg laying queen.  

2)   join the bees to old hive. Use them to collect honey, because they are that age.

You put double screen between hives and put the box ovet the old hive 2 days. When they have  same scent, they will accept each other. Also you can pour sugar water in upper box that bees are full of food before you join them. There may be a queen which is quick to kill fat queen.


For sure put the queen in the little cage (one side open) and press cage against combs and 10 bees with them.

3) You get new queen and you make a nuc over that queenless hive. Put douple screen between them.  Take a frame of emerging bees from your old hive and another frame pollen and honey.  Bees emerge in the warm of naughty hive.