Go back to my original problem. There is no sign of the queen in the hive so I am guessing that she has suffered some kind of mishap. No new eggs, but she could just have stopped ready to go. I took down the QCs last week, but on inspection yesterday there were more and several of them had been sealed. They look like emergency cells to me. I have now reduced down to just one sealed QC.
My question now is whether a queen emerging at this point in the year is going to mate? If she doesn't, is there any hope for this colony?
Oh dear.
Yes Q could easily still mate.
With a mated Q, colony could survive.
But ... you would be best advised to ask around your Association chums or a spare Q.
Pronto.
So you can requeen - removing that QC before emergence, as finding and removing virgins can be pretty difficult.
But you have no more than a week to remove the QC ...
Why requeen rather than let the Emergency Q set up her own stall?
Well, time for one thing. You'd get new brood much faster, and more brood, more winter bees, better overwintering chances.
For another, you selected a sealed rather than an open emergency cell.
...on inspection yesterday there were more and several of them had been sealed. They look like emergency cells to me. I have now reduced down to just one sealed QC
You chose to leave a sealed cell rather than an open one.
That means you have NOT chosen an Emergency Cell based on the youngest possible larva, so you have chosen a QC with less (rather than more) special QC feeding. That means she won't be as good at egg-laying as a "full-term" Q might have been.
Emergency queens can be good, very good. But Emergency Qs started on older larvae, getting less of the special feeding, can't be as good as one getting the full service.
The last QC (of the flush) to be sealed is likely to have been the one started on the youngest larva, and therefore to have got the most QC feeding.
The first one sealed has to have had the
least days of special QC feeding.
Hence I'm suggesting finding a new Q from a generous pal, and if you can get the promise within the week, remove that sealed QC (and any more QCs that might have been missed before).
You can always think in terms of re-requeening in late spring with a new-season Q if the gift horse has bad teeth (or temper).
If you don't have a replacement on offer, and so let that QC emerge and there's no new brood showing in about a month's time ... you are going to need to be thinking in terms of having to unite with another colony.
That would be an option now (or during the next week), but its not absolutely necessary.
Quite small colonies can be successfully overwintered, with enough TLC.
