I left my hives 3 weeks from the earliest I knew I had a hatched virgin queen in each before I looked for brood. It can take that long for a queen to mate and start laying.
Others will comment but you need to be really sure you are queenless before you buy in queens - can you put in a test...
I have two hives at the end of our garden (100ft), we started off with one but did a recent split. My daughter is 9 and started off doing the bees with me, she has her own suit and knows the different casts of bees and all about inspections. She did her recent Brownie Hobby badge on...
Nothing from my two yet. Both headed by newly mated queens and building up. Only one full super but that is a mixture of stores from overwintering and honey so won't be extracting that :-( one super starting to be drawn out and filled though :-)
Opened both my hives up yesterday and found worker brood and larvae in both hives. Very happy as both hives have mated queens. Lots of bees, one a lot happier to be looked at than the other, lol. Lots of stores, well done girls - now start making a bit of honey for me ?
Am I misreading this then? It reads to me that they will use a harmless method OR a pyrethroid spray - doesn't sound to me that the pyrethroid is harmless!
You don't know yet that there isn't a virgin queen in the second swarm. If it is a cast from the original I doubt they would have departed without a queen. You need to give her a few weeks to mate and come into lay, if no eggs or larvae then you can test for queenlessness by putting in a test...
What about putting a queen excluder on top of a brood box, add an empty super and shake the bees onto the queen excluder. Smoke them down and you should be able to find the queen that can't get through the qe.
You need to go in with a purpose : What am I looking for? For instance my "inspection" today lasted all of one minute on each hive - I have virgin queens in both my hives and do not want to mess with them so only took the roof off and the crownboard to check the frames on the super were being...
Just to add that if you do have a virgin queen in there rather than a mated queen then it can take several weeks for her to show evidence of laying. As already mentioned you need to put a test frame in to check that you do not have a virgin queen already running around.
So will it be alright to leave it in for the summer in case they need it though - the super that is very heavy will definatly have a lot of sugar syrup in it and they had it on as brood and a half over the winter before so really don't want to extract that honey:cool:
Hadn't thought of it from that side, I work in a school so in theory it should be a good time as I am off for the week, however two young children as well so we are away camping for the week.