Advice Please

[northernsoul]

Hi,

I've had a bit of a year of it so far what with swarms and casts and AS's that didn't work.

Anyway, one of my two colonies was created from two queenless colonies united which I then introduced a q via a cage which I bought. That was 2 weeks ago.

Unfortunately I discovered today that the Q is not there, bee numbers aren't great but out of somewhere they created 2 Q cells which are now capped (there's no other brood).

I can't as yet give the hive a frame of brood from my other hive as the Q in there has just started laying and there's only two fames with brood so far.

I'm not that keen to unite as it only leaves me with one colony.

Any thoughts on what I can do, or maybe I should leave them alone and see what transpires

 

[gavin]

Do you have a local beekeeper to call on, to beg a frame of eggs? Even better, a queen cell which you could protect with a coiled queen protector or even some Aluminium foil, leaving the tip exposed?

I have a swarmed hive giving me trouble. It has been making Q cells, but also has eggs in both drone and worker brood, and the worker brood is now being capped as drone. I tried shaking the bees out some distance away and putting a box with a nuc with a laying queen on the old site, but I'm not yet sure if that worked. At least I have Q cells on the frames from the introduced nuc now, so they may be OK. Q cells from the apparent drone-layer had a smooth surface outside, and grubs which looked like drone to me (too wrinkly, too slow to pupate).

all the best

Gavin