inspect or leave them to it?

[wondervet]

Slightly odd situation. We have a Q- hive with a single queen cell due to hatch in 2-3 days time. They weren't strong enough to split so we culled the old queen 4 days ago. Knocked down all but one queen cell on same day and then repeated procedure today (they had produced another 6 or 7 charged QCs in the meantime).

Question is can we now just leave them alone for a couple of weeks while virgin queen hatches and gets mated (and assume that she will take care of any further QC produced on 4 day larvae) or is it wise to inspect again -and if so, when? (In 3 days to catch further QCs before capped?).

What would you do?

 

[oliver90owner]

Simple maths. Think, here, that they can build queen cells on 3 day old larvae; that is day 6 after the egg is laid. Does that allow you to answer your question? Or tell you what I would do?

 

[Midland Beek]

Slightly odd situation. We have a Q- hive with a single queen cell due to hatch in 2-3 days time. They weren't strong enough to split so we culled the old queen 4 days ago. Knocked down all but one queen cell on same day and then repeated procedure today (they had produced another 6 or 7 charged QCs in the meantime).?

Assuming here that the queen cell you left was the original one you chose and not a later emergency one. If they were swarm cells you would have thought the colony was quite strong?

Question is can we now just leave them alone for a couple of weeks while virgin queen hatches and gets mated (and assume that she will take care of any further QC produced on 4 day larvae) or is it wise to inspect again -and if so, when? (In 3 days to catch further QCs before capped?).

If the new queen is set to emerge in 2/3 days time I don't think you need to inspect again in order to destroy subsequent queen cells. I would leave more like 3 or 4 weeks as opposed to 2.

 

[ratcatcher]

sorry if this is a really "newbie" question, but why go through all of that

surely if the hive was not big enough to split, why not just move the queen and all bees into a fresh hive, with just wax foundation, no brood, to give them the impression that they had swarmed, or am I looking at it wrong

sounds crazy to squish a good queen

 

[oliver90owner]

Ratcatcher,

The scenario is possibly one of a space issue. 'Knocked down all but one' indicates more cells than supercedure. If nothing else changes, they will still be in swarm mode.

When all the information which might make the situation clearer is not included, one has to assume the worst that could happen, so needs to be 'belt and braces'.

One would have thought, if the queen is due to emerge in 2-3 days time (maybe only 6 days after culling the queen), she would have swarmed a couple days earlier and would have ceased laying ready for going. So certainly an odd situation, it seems.

 

[Finman]

Question is can we now just leave them alone for a couple of weeks while virgin queen hatches and gets mated

What would you do?

If hive is going to swarm, it surely will swarm if you "leave it to be".

You must stop the swarming fever or you loose your bees.

This time of year you hive is still weak. Propably the queen mother is not good and its daughters may be same quality as mother. Better to buy a better queens to the hive.

What ever, no idea to take daughters from worst hive.

.......A weak hive and swarms. Not good.

.

 

[Madge]

A bit late now, but as a strategy. wondervet, culling a queen before you have a new one is, I think, risky. I wouldn't have chosen that route.

 

[wondervet]

Thanks for replies.

since most were along the lines of 'I wouldn't have started from here'. The way we got to 'here' was:

-strong colony (at least by standards of what is usual at 200m in W Yorks!). On brood-and-a-half over winter. Had laid up most of brood box and super by time of first proper inspection early April. Seemed a good opportunity to finally make some honey...

-2 supers on by mid-April

-queen unknown age prime swarm last year. Knew they were likely to swarm so we demaree-ed them towards end of April. They hadn't actually produced any queen cells at that point -but with benefit of hindsight I think they must have been going into swarm mode because Q (clipped) almost completely packed up laying thereafter despite abundant room and just about optimal foraging conditions. Over following 3 weeks at each inspection there were just a handful of new eggs and several swarm cells. Didn't want to split as packing in honey -I know this looks a bit short-sighted but honestly we haven't had a drop of honey for last 2 years -it was desperation!!. They now have 2 supers and two brood boxes rammed with mostly capped stores. So we got what we aimed for.

-downside was we ended up with this colony packed full of bees but just about one frame of brood. Really nice bees too so didn't want to buy in a queen to requeen. I know the population is going to fall off a cliff in a few weeks and with almost no brood I didn't think we had enough for a split even after we got our harvest. Couldn't go on with same situation of minimal laying so we eliminated the queen and left the biggest QC. I suppose we could have parked her in a nuc while they requeen but if requeening unsuccessful then we would have opted for buying in a this-year's queen to replace. I was a bit concerned that they might not work effectively while queenless but it doesn't seem to have been a problem.

I know I could have included more info in the initial post but got to strike a bit of a balance with keeping it pithy.

anyway, as to the initial question. We decided that they were in swarm mode and not to be trusted so we did inspect again 3 days after I posted the question and.......they had produced another couple of queen cells on 4 day larvae in addition to our chosen one. I suppose the virgin might eventually have killed the further queens but didn't want to take that chance.

And thanks to last week's swarm storm they're no longer our only colony. Good news.

 

[wondervet]

(I meant 4 day larvae as in 4 days after those eggs were laid).