2 hives and queens to one?

[Baggyone]

Further to my queenless hive, I purchased 2 mated queens which arrived last wednesday. Introduced them the same day to the main hive and a split, to hedge me bets.

Inspected today as pollen going in to both hives.

In the split I found eggs and the new queen doing her thing with perhaps 4 frames of bees. So all is well in that one.

In the parent hive, could not see the new queen and could only find a small number of laid eggs. Many more bees in this half of the split.

As I have a known quantity in the split and an unknown in the parent, after next weeks inspection shows no improvement in the parent, would it be prudent to combine the two hives?

To do this, I would possibly simply move the parent about 10ft and allow the flyers to go to the split. Hopefully this would mean that not too many bees would go to the split in one go and overcome the smaller colony and that if there is a poorly mated queen in the parent hive then that can simply dwindle away and I have used the flyers to the best I can.

Thoughts please.

Baggy

 

[Mike a]

Don't panic, give them another 7-10 days and check again for eggs - larvae and look at the frame with the eggs you found on it to see if they have been capped over with worker or drone capping. Some queens are experts at jumping frames and hiding or just take longer to recover from travelling before they get to work.

 

[Baggyone]

Was definatly leaving it a bit longer to see. At least there was a few eggs in there.

 

[DanielSELondon]

I might need to buy a mated queen sometime soon - where did you get yours from?

Cheers, Daniel

 

[Onge]

I would also like to know.

Thanks