New Beekeeper from Florence KY

[JustinT]

Hello all! My name is Justin, this is my second year now working with bees and my first year actually having my own. I find it to be a great hobby and I'm amazed a little more everyday as I learn about these creatures. I started out with my first hive on 5/26/12. I received an established split/nuc from my wife's grandfather who has around 15 hives. Unfortunately it looks like the queen in the nuc either swarmed or died a day or two before I received it. TUpon my first inspection (about 3 days after placing my hive) there were 7 queen cells, 3 capped, 4 uncapped, with a healthy sized bee population. The queen cells were placed around the center of the frames which came from the nuc, and 1-2 on each frame. I could not find eggs anywhere in any of the frames. After doing another inspection this past Wednesday I found only 2 capped queen cells remaining and the rest had been mostly disassembled. I looked, but could not pin point a queen. On the 2 most center frames in the hive I saw 1 egg laid in nearly every empty frame and got very excited, however after reinspecting again last night I found that now 4 of the original 5 frames have eggs in them, but the outermost frames had many cells with 4-6 eggs in each cell, most liad flat in the cell and over top of one another. I'm not sure if this is laying workers or just a new queen that hasn't figured it out yet. The 2 center frames still had one egg standing on end or small larva in each cell. I've been afraid to remove the remaining queen cells for fear of not having a good queen. The bees seem to have a heavy taffic pattern with several entering and leaving the hive every couple of seconds and have a steady flow of nectar and pollen coming in. There appear to be no signs of mites. They have started to draw out comb on the 5 empty foundations I inserted with the 5 established nuc frames. The bees are very calm and do not seem to be worried. So, I'm not sure of what, if anything, I should do.  Any advice would be very appreciated!! Sorry for such a long first post!

[Joe D]

Welcome to the forum, Justin.  You need someone with more bee knowledge that I to answer your questions.  Some body will give you an answer you can use that maybe will help.  Good luck.


Joe

[AllenF]

Check for eggs in a few weeks and see if they made a queen.  And welcome to the forum.

[specialkayme]

Welcome to the site!

[tefer2]

Welcome to Beemaster Justin.

[winginit]

Welcome Justin, good luck with your bees. Have fun reading here on Beemaster an with your bees...and try not to quit your day job. This is addictive.   

Christy in Batavia

[Javin]

Welcome, Justin!  Unfortunately, you have laying workers.    The queen will lay one upright egg per cell, but workers will lay multiple eggs, and eggs on the sides of the cell.  I've heard bad things about laying worker hives, and don't know the odds of them recovering if one of those queen cells becomes viable. 

I think this may be a natural reaction.  Should a queen hatch, this would produce numerous drones for her to mate with, but I'm just grabbing at straws here. It takes 20+ days for a new queen to start laying, so hopefully by now you'll be seeing some real queen activity?  I'd be interested in hearing the outcome!