JCB
New Bee
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2015
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 2
- Location
- Sussex
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 2
Hello
Last winter our single colony of bees died, so I decided that we wouldn't get any more bees this year. However when I went to bring the hive in to clean and store I noticed activity - a new swarm had turned up complete with a marked queen!
I returned to the hive two weeks later to discover that the bees had apparently swarmed again - at least the queen was nowhere to be seen, there were no eggs and no brood. The strange thing is that there were also no queen cups to be seen. Since there were still lots of bees present in the hive I decided to order a new queen.
Nearly two weeks later the queen arrived. I opened the hive to do a quick inspection before putting her in and, lo and behold, there were eggs, brood and capped brood - loads of it! Then I spotted the queen (who wasn't marked. Still scratching my head as there were no queen cups to be seen).
I decided to dust off another hive, take some frames of capped brood from the other hive as instructed in the textbooks and set the queen cage in the middle of the frames.
I returned to the new hive today (three days later) and the hive had been abandoned. Couldn't see any evidence of the queen (dead or alive); there were two dead bees still in the cage, and a handful of bees (presumably from the other hive) checking the place out, perhaps.
So three things:
1. Any ideas regarding the mystery of the queen-cup-less queen?
2. What may have happened in the second hive? and, more importantly,
3. Should I put the capped brood frames back in the busy hive or will it cause problems (there's also uncapped brood on those frames, presumably dead?)?
I'd be really grateful of any pointers.
Thank you
Last winter our single colony of bees died, so I decided that we wouldn't get any more bees this year. However when I went to bring the hive in to clean and store I noticed activity - a new swarm had turned up complete with a marked queen!
I returned to the hive two weeks later to discover that the bees had apparently swarmed again - at least the queen was nowhere to be seen, there were no eggs and no brood. The strange thing is that there were also no queen cups to be seen. Since there were still lots of bees present in the hive I decided to order a new queen.
Nearly two weeks later the queen arrived. I opened the hive to do a quick inspection before putting her in and, lo and behold, there were eggs, brood and capped brood - loads of it! Then I spotted the queen (who wasn't marked. Still scratching my head as there were no queen cups to be seen).
I decided to dust off another hive, take some frames of capped brood from the other hive as instructed in the textbooks and set the queen cage in the middle of the frames.
I returned to the new hive today (three days later) and the hive had been abandoned. Couldn't see any evidence of the queen (dead or alive); there were two dead bees still in the cage, and a handful of bees (presumably from the other hive) checking the place out, perhaps.
So three things:
1. Any ideas regarding the mystery of the queen-cup-less queen?
2. What may have happened in the second hive? and, more importantly,
3. Should I put the capped brood frames back in the busy hive or will it cause problems (there's also uncapped brood on those frames, presumably dead?)?
I'd be really grateful of any pointers.
Thank you