Elusive queen

[New Bee 2]

Hello again! I've been having a nightmare this year with a dodgy nuc that I purchased back in May. To cut a long story short, it swarmed for the third time last week. I found 6 queen cells on Friday and went in today to remove them having established that requeening at this time of years wasn't a totally mad thing to do. My problem is that one of the queens had hatched & I can't find her

I looked through twice and couldn't spot her at all. Does anyone have any tips on how to flush her out??

 

[milkermel]

So presume you want to destroy her or are you planning to keep her? If you are planning to keep her then leave her to mate and you will soon spot her! took me a month before I found my new queens

 

[Rosti]

This is an easier gamble with multiple hives and you say you have 3.

So you have a colony that has swarmed 3 times from a national, while it has been developed from a nuc. It would be useful to know how many frames they cover and how many have brood (peak and now).
Assuming that you want a stable managed colony and some honey (ta'boot) you dont want them putting all their efforts into more bees and swarming!

I would suggest you find your current queen, remove her and a couple of frames to a well insulated short term nuc; retain new queen in orig hive, hope the new queen mates; if she does knock your old queen on the head; recombine; winter with the new queen - and hope that the genes from the drones have calmed down the nutrient inefficiency and swarm tendancy! If not recombine with old queen but at the cost of some winter bee numbers.

If you have a mated 'new option' take it, keep your current as the insurance. Rather dependant on some reprieved drones and an indian summer granted! Probably not what you were expecting to hear and probably at odds with some subsequent threads.

 

[Poly Hive]

Can I ask how you know they swarmed?

PH

 

[New Bee 2]

Sure! My husband saw them! He saw the other 2 swarms too so he's getting quite good at spotting them I really just want to be rid of this gene pool and start affresh. This lot certainly haven't read the books!

 

[New Bee 2]

Thanks Rosti .. a great fall back plan! If I can't find the current queen then I guess I'll have no option but to try to set up a nuc with the new queen. Theres 7 frames of brood at the mo. Cheers