gone

[always weeding]

Hi,
a long story but i had two queens, i put one in another hive with a few frames of bees and eggs and then introduced my bought mated queen to the original hive. after a week i have inspected the 2nd hive and all the bees and queen are gone.
having looked in the first hive i couldnt see the marked queen although she had broken out of the cage that was put in.
my question is this . will the original queen have gone back to hive one and will she destroy the bought in queen?

cheers

 

[meidel]

If all the bees and queen have gone, what are on the frames of eggs you put in the hive?

It's possible that foragers would return to the original hive but nurse bees don't usually abandon brood ...

 

[always weeding]

there is nothing on them. i supppose either way i will have a colony with a queen but which queen will i have is another question,i hope its the marked one that i bought as it cost me some dough.

 

[meidel]

there is nothing on them. i supppose either way i will have a colony with a queen but which queen will i have is another question,i hope its the marked one that i bought as it cost me some dough.

it sounds more likely they've been robbed ...

 

[meidel]

if it's a case of robbery then your colony with the bought queen will probably still have the same queen

 

[always weeding]

this is going to sound really silly but what exactly do you mean by "robbed"

 

[meidel]

I'm afraid to say that robbed means other predators have gone in and taken everything - could be other bees if they were a small colony and they could have become a small colony because the foragers had returned to the original hive ...

 

[susbees]

Hi,
i put one in another hive with a few frames of bees and eggs

Did you feed them or give them a good supply of stores on a frame? Block the entrance with grass? The foragers will have gone home and left non-flyers to feed brood on whatever was on the frames. Then likely robbed out by the original stronger colony.

 

[always weeding]

yes they had a feeder on but it was a very,very small colony. so where would the queen have gone then?

 

[Tom Bick]

Perhaps the bees absconded?

I made up a nuc this year from a hive I was going to combine with another this year. The nuc set up to what I would have considered ok found the queen on a frame, that frame happened to be full of eggs and perhaps the eggs are the critical factor in this. I then gave them a frame of stores and drawn frames along with a shake of bees. The nuc was placed in the position of the original hive as I moved the hive to combine with the other so no problem with returning bees and actually the nuc would gain a few. The next day I had a report of a swarm and it was this nuc it had decided to abscond and left very few bees.

I may have underestimated the number of returning bees to the nuc and they got overcrowded or as the queen was prolific and despite the drawn frames they considered not for us.

 

[meidel]

yes they had a feeder on but it was a very,very small colony. so where would the queen have gone then?

Although Tom Bick paints a possible positive scenario for your disappearing bees - they thrived and swarmed to find a larger home, I'm the pessimist (sorry) who thinks it likelier that your 2nd colony was robbed. Unless you'd placed this colony with the old queen in the original position of the old hive I'm inclined to think that your old queen went up to the feeder and possibly drowned ... did you check if there were drowned bees in the feeder?

Actually were there signs of fighting - limbs and bee parts scattered? this might indicate your bees tried to defend their base.

 

[psafloyd]

Has anyone suggested CCD, yet?

Only kiddin'...

 

[Tom Bick]

Although Tom Bick paints a possible positive scenario for your disappearing bees - they thrived and swarmed to find a larger home, I'm the pessimist (sorry) who thinks it likelier that your 2nd colony was robbed. Unless you'd placed this colony with the old queen in the original position of the old hive I'm inclined to think that your old queen went up to the feeder and possibly drowned ... did you check if there were drowned bees in the feeder?

Actually were there signs of fighting - limbs and bee parts scattered? this might indicate your bees tried to defend their base.

Hi meidel dont think the bees had time to thrive and swarm, in the OP's case the nuc was found empty 7 days later and in my case they left the next day. My situation defiantly absconded but not so clear with the OP. Another possible explanation and one mentioned in your post was the nuc was robbed out and the bees in the nuc just followed the bees back to their hive. As for the queen??

 

[oliver90owner]

Yep, you got it of sorts.

Silent robbing at best.

Bees were likely all flying bees. No laying queen for some while.

Feeder on when flyers went home. They would be back to clear the feeder and comb.

New queen was in the old hive position so the newly-laying queen may have returned. Outcome indeterminate. Requires inspection to ascertain.

Predictable. The problem should have been spotted at the time, really. Precautions could have been suggested.

 

[Travelator]

It seems as if we've arrived at a pretty good hypothesis about what went wrong (small colony was too small to be viable and/or had the wrong makeup in terms of eggs/brood/flyers/stores).

If I've understood it right, "always weeding", the OP started with a single colony in reasonable condition and wanted to increase his colony numbers by buying in a queen and doing a split.

So, what would have been the right way to go about it? (Or the large variety of different ways which are all right, since this is an audience of beekeepers!)
Split into two equal size units, both slightly to one side of the original site? Make up a nuc, but make sure it has some open brood and shake in a *lot* of bees on the assumption that half of them will be flyers and will head for home?

 

[always weeding]

Rab it sounds as if you might have it right,well it sounds good to me anyway.thanks guys for the replies