Do I need a pre-ordered mated queen

[daveyowen]

Hello all,

After starting beekeeping 10-11 months ago I now have three hives. The third one was from a recent split (10 days ago) of a hive which consisted of two brood boxes.

The Queen remained in the brood box left with the original hive , and I put in a frame of the most recent eggs that I could see. Unsure whether they were older than 3 days or not.

Anyway, I could not see after one week any attempt to make a queen at all, the bees were not flying out whereas the bees in the other two hives were very busy. Therefore, I decided to purchase a mated queen.

However, yesterday evening, there was a lot of activity outside, so decided to look at them today and found several qc that were empty, but one which I have attached is capped. Note: I looked at all the frames in that hive.

If capped, does that mean that there definitely will be a virgin queen appearing shortly ?

Should I cancel the order, or introduce it and leave it up to the bees to decide? If the queen making fails then I maybe back to square one anyway.

Note(2) I purchased one 6 frame nuc late last July and a over wintered nuc that I received late April 21.

Note(3) I have been unable to get a mentor from either MidsBucksBKA or the one at Oxford. I live between the two. There is a someone nearby who is a honey producer by trade who I have leaned on once and he gladly helped, but as he had 100 plus hives to look after I don't want to hinder him too much.

Any help would be great, as I learn a lot by reading everyone's threads

Many thanks,

David

Ps. These are national hives and bees are Buckfast. Unsure how much more I can help. Currently, I cannot find a queen in either of the three hives, but I am not very good at spotting them .

 

[drdrday]

No expert here, but I'd definitely cancel your order for a queen. The bees usually know what they're doing in producing a queen, but you've only given them 10 days to sort things out. Although a queen takes 16 days from egg to emergence, bees can create emergency queen cells from brood up to 4-5 days old, so an emerging queen could be imminent. Putting a bought in queen into the hive when there is likely to already be a virgin in there will probably just guarantee her death and waste your money.
If (much further down the road) it turns out that for some reason the bees couldn't produce a mated queen, with two other hives you should have plenty of eggs that you can always put into this hive to let them try again.
Like I said, I've only kept bees myself for 3 years, but it sounds like you're jumping the gun a bit to me.

 

[user 819]

Eggs older then 3 days are called larvae.

Leave them mostly alone for three and they will sort them selves out, the only thing you need to do is make sure stores are good,

 

[ericbeaumont]

Should I cancel the order, or introduce it and leave it up to the bees to decide?

Don't give bees options.

There's no certainty of a good new queen so a back-up would be useful.

Why not make up a nuc, introduce the bought Q to that, and unite with newspaper to the main colony if needed.

If not, you can sell the nuc next spring or use it to replace a winter loss.