How long shall I give her?

[gregior]

Did a Demaree on one of mine on 10th of April, they built a couple of supercedure cells and the queen below is knocking on a bit so I gave them a seperate entrance and let them raise a new Q with the intention of re-uniting and bumping off the old Q when the new Q was laying. Checked them on 1st June and saw the clearly mated new Q but no eggs so presumed she was only just mated. Checked them again today and saw the nice fat new Q again but STILL not one single egg. Is this Q a duffer or does it sometimes take a good while for a new Q to start laying? We are in the June gap here and there isn't much nectar coming in but they have plenty of stores.

 

[Ian123]

Given any half decent weather I expect most of mine to be up and laying 2-3 weeks after they’ve emerged. It appears to me there’s a few day gap between mating and getting going but that’s only my guess/observation.

 

[jeff33]

Did a Demaree on one of mine on 10th of April, they built a couple of supercedure cells and the queen below is knocking on a bit so I gave them a seperate entrance and let them raise a new Q with the intention of re-uniting and bumping off the old Q when the new Q was laying. Checked them on 1st June and saw the clearly mated new Q but no eggs so presumed she was only just mated. Checked them again today and saw the nice fat new Q again but STILL not one single egg. Is this Q a duffer or does it sometimes take a good while for a new Q to start laying? We are in the June gap here and there isn't much nectar coming in but they have plenty of stores.

I would have expected a new queen to start laying 8 weeks after. Mine have been laying within 3 weeks of emerging. Maybe try to put a frame of open brood in there to see if it kicks her into action?

 

[gregior]

I would have expected a new queen to start laying 8 weeks after. Mine have been laying within 3 weeks of emerging. Maybe try to put a frame of open brood in there to see if it kicks her into action?

She's definately mated just not laying anything atall

 

[jeff33]

The bulbus of a drone wouldn't be stuck in there? I had to remove one from a queen the other day.

 

[gregior]

The bulbus of a drone wouldn't be stuck in there? I had to remove one from a queen the other day.

Don't think so didn't see anything unusual just a big queen refusing to lay.

 

[jeff33]

Don't think so didn't see anything unusual just a big queen refusing to lay.

Try the frame of bias, it has worked for me a cple of times (unless it was just luck with timing).

 

[fizzle]

She's definately mated just not laying anything atall

Sorry to drag this up but curious to know what happened. Did the Queen survive?

 

[gregior]

Sorry to drag this up but curious to know what happened. Did the Queen survive?

No I bumped her off eventually.