Last years queens

[rae]

Is anyone else having a problem with last year’s queens?

We have 8 hives, and at first inspection, all made it through winter. One had turned drone layer, but the rest had brood and bees. We were looking forward to an epic OSR crop, and all was good. At the most recent inspection, the position is:

Colony 1 – drone layer, as per first inspection, given a queen cell to be getting on with.
Colony 2 – superseding, left them to get on with it.
Colony 3 – OK, doing well.
Colony 4 – swarm cells, split into three.
Colony 5 – OK, doing well
Colony 6 – gone broodless, need to get to the bottom of this.
Colony 7 – OK, were small after winter, building nicely.
Colony 8 – hopefully OK, just merged with a nuc.

Colony 1, 2 ,5 and 6 were last years queens. Colonies 3, 4, 7 and 8 are either 2 years old, or “unknown” – we were given Colony 8.

By my reckoning this is something like 75% failure of the queens from last season. Seems high.

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

Is anyone else having a problem with last year’s queens?

We have 8 hives, and at first inspection, all made it through winter. One had turned drone layer, but the rest had brood and bees. We were looking forward to an epic OSR crop, and all was good. At the most recent inspection, the position is:

Colony 1 – drone layer, as per first inspection, given a queen cell to be getting on with.
Colony 2 – superseding, left them to get on with it.
Colony 3 – OK, doing well.
Colony 4 – swarm cells, split into three.
Colony 5 – OK, doing well
Colony 6 – gone broodless, need to get to the bottom of this.
Colony 7 – OK, were small after winter, building nicely.
Colony 8 – hopefully OK, just merged with a nuc.

Colony 1, 2 ,5 and 6 were last years queens. Colonies 3, 4, 7 and 8 are either 2 years old, or “unknown” – we were given Colony 8.

By my reckoning this is something like 75% failure of the queens from last season. Seems high.

3 out of 3 2011 queens from different lineages all doing well as of last inspection

 

[george]

Yes . Several have gone drone layer over Winter or did not lay well enough to generate enough bees to see them through Winter.

The bee farmer I help out has had the same problem too so not just me .

 

[fiftyjon]

Yes, I've had some that have failed or superceded early and others that have gone on quite well.
I would say that 25% of my 2011 mated queens last year have failed in one way or another, none were drone layers though, they all seemed to lay very well after mating and the colonies built up well, it was just they ran out of steam.