Speybee
Field Bee
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2020
- Messages
- 538
- Reaction score
- 174
- Location
- Scotland
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 4 (3 National and 1 wbc)
I have a hive that swarmed this season and managed to successfully hive the prime swarm and hive the first cast.The prime swarm we successfully replaced the old queen with a mated caged queen and the first cast had a newly mated queen, both hives now doing well.
Problem is the ‘swarmy‘ hive, I checked through the brood nest for queen cells and queen and found nothing.
Inserted a queen excluder above the deep brood nest so they could cap off the unsealed honey above in the honey super.
Introduced a blue dot marked, mated caged queen who was accepted, three weeks later on saw her.
Last week at inspection found some fresh sealed brood ABOVE the queen excluder but no sign of an unmarked queen and a pepper pot pattern of drone brood below the queen excluder in the deep brood nest.
Decided to remove queen excluder to let them fight it out to have a brood and a half but despite going through hive twice DID NOT see the blue dot queen, or any other queen.
There were no eggs in the half brood box this week and none in the deep brood box.
Have I got a poorly mated caged queen laying drone cells?
Or have I got no queen at all?
Advice would be really welcome please.
Problem is the ‘swarmy‘ hive, I checked through the brood nest for queen cells and queen and found nothing.
Inserted a queen excluder above the deep brood nest so they could cap off the unsealed honey above in the honey super.
Introduced a blue dot marked, mated caged queen who was accepted, three weeks later on saw her.
Last week at inspection found some fresh sealed brood ABOVE the queen excluder but no sign of an unmarked queen and a pepper pot pattern of drone brood below the queen excluder in the deep brood nest.
Decided to remove queen excluder to let them fight it out to have a brood and a half but despite going through hive twice DID NOT see the blue dot queen, or any other queen.
There were no eggs in the half brood box this week and none in the deep brood box.
Have I got a poorly mated caged queen laying drone cells?
Or have I got no queen at all?
Advice would be really welcome please.