missing queen ?

[betterbee]

advice needed
went to my breeder hive to get some grafts ,older larvae sealed and open brood
no sign of queen placed test frame of eggs/larvae 4 days ago no emergency cells drawn still no sign of eggs ?

 

[masterBK]

Possibly they have produced a supersedure queen that has killed her mother but until she is mated and begins to lay you will see no eggs. Presence of this queen inhibits the building of emergency cells. I have colonies that break down the supersedure cells after queen has emerged leaving very little evidence that they were there.

On a related matter today I went into a small colony housing my 3 yr old breeder queen with the intention of putting her in a Jenter box to produce yet another batch of Q cells. Last week the colony produced one supersedure cell which I removed . This time there were about 10 eggs in total and the queen absent (I am quite good at finding queens so am sure she wasn't there) with 3 unsealed supersedure cells (definitely not swarm or emergency cells).

 

[betterbee]

update,missing queen

full marks to masterBK,queen superseeded daughter laying verry well,still not sure how i missed the cell,,another lesson learned again many thanks

 

[Skyhook]

Interesting! I'd always understood that there was an overlap with supercedure, that the old queen wouldn't be killed until the new one was up and running.


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[Finman]

Interesting! I'd always understood that there was an overlap with supercedure, that the old queen wouldn't be killed until the new one was up and running.


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Old queen may be sick, crushed or what ever.

Old queen is normalle killed when a new emerges. It is rare that old and new lay together (the rest is dreaming)

It takes minimum 10 days when new queen emerges and it starts to lay.

 

[masterBK]

Two types of supersedure
Inefficient (imperfect) supersedure is where the new queen emerges from her cell and kills her mother before mating and laying. This is inefficient because a gap in egg laying occurs
Efficient (perfect) supersedure is where the new queen emerges but her mother is not killed and continues to lay. The virgin will mate and she also lay. Eventually only the daughter queen will remain when her mother “disappears” presumably killed but this may be weeks or months later

 

[Finman]

.
My neighbour (600 m to south) had a giant hive. It had 11 boxes.
Then he found that mother and daughter has layed all the time together.

Next year it was same thing. Then a bear broke the hive and the queen died.

Why it is so. Breeding fault by human or what?
Normal natural cavity does not stand 2 queen laying.