Missing Queen

richardbees · Jul 4, 2011

Hello Thundercat

We are all so relieved that you've finally got a proper 'bought-in' Queen that's laying.

Can I suggest you leave her in a brood box (full of foundation) on the stand, then put on the queen excluder, then put on a super full of new foundation, then the cover board then the roof.

Meanwhile, neatly arrange all the rest of your frames on a sheet of ply propped up in front of the entrance. Viable bees will walk up into the hive - the rest will feed the local robin.

It's what I'd do!
Richard

oliver90owner · Jul 4, 2011

I would suspect the poster does not know for sure if there are laying workers in that super. I would strongly suspect there is a DLQ up there.

In that scenario, I would not want to risk a DLQ getting back in the colony.

So as richardbees suggests but put some distance between the bees from the super and the hive - ie shake them out well away from the entrance - or sit and watch for a possible DLQ crawling up the ply board!

RAB

Poly Hive · Jul 5, 2011

The primary lesson here is to have a spare hive or nuc so you can CHECK your position before buying in queens which are doomed.

Of course a queen vendor is going to suggest you try one last time with another queen, they dinna care if she lives or dies, they want a sale.

PH

thundercat · Jul 6, 2011

In fairness, Fragile Planet were very helpful. I only paid for one queen. The second one was free! So, the supplier wasn't the money hungry monster that PH imagined.

We removed a lot of drone brood from the hive, and at the moment, everything looks good. The new queen is laying nicely, and I'm hoping that she's going to become the supreme and only egg layer. The problem is that we still seeing some egg laying worker(s) or drones. What people forget is that you can have many egg laying workers (Drones), and not just one! I am hoping that once the queen establishes herself [she's been there for 2 weeks], the impostors will stop laying... I will try and isolate the bees in the super on my next visit. That is, move the supers 25 feet away, shake out the bees [although I'll do this very thoroughly - supers over and then transfer empty frames one by one], and hope I isolate the ELD (egg laying drone).