No queen

[Farmerdresch]

Looking for some advice. On first check of bees I noticed there was no queen. I've checked a few times since and she's definatly gone. There's only drone brood present. Anyway I tried to be sneaky and added a frame of eggs from another hive hoping they would produce a new queen but no luck they've just sealed it as normal brood. Question is, can I not just introduce a new queen???

 

[JEP]

It sounds like there is a queen but it is a drone layer. Is the drone brood concentrated together if this is the case then it is certainly a drone laying queen, laying workers lay eggs in a more random distribution all over the place. You can introduce a new queen but you will have to kill the drone laying queen first (she may be quite small and hard to spot).

 

[Erichalfbee]

So your test frame did not yield any QCs.
There might still be a queen of sorts laying drones.
Did you see eggs?

 

[Farmerdresch]

The drone brood is random with some almost like qcs but not seen any eggs and my old queen was marked so pretty sure she's not there!

 

[JEP]

Ok in that case you have a few options. What I normally do is just unite the hive with a decent colony that is nearby. This really is the best and most economical option because the bees will all be old and not in an good state to receive a new queen.

If you are determined to keep the hive going then the best way is to keep adding frames of brood (with eggs) at one week intervals. As you have already added one you may find that after two more weeks / frames of brood the bees will try to raise queen cells. At this point you could kill the queen cells and introduce a queen with a reasonable chance of success.

 

[Farmerdresch]

Ok uniting sounds best. Would you just do newspaper method and then leave double brood chambers?

 

[JEP]

Firstly you need to get the two hives you want to unite within about 4 or 5 foot of each other. If this is already the case then great if not you can move both of them about 2 foot towards each other each day (assuming the weather is good). Newspaper method works well but to be honest all I do is once the hives are close enough then put the decent hive in the middle of where the two were. Smoke the rubbish hive well (so that they fill up on honey) then take it away about 50 yards and shake all the bees onto the ground - they tend to sort themselves out without much fighting. Sometimes they can form clumps on the roof or ground around the new hive so go back after 20 mins. and smoke them off if necessary, they usually seem to go in ok after this.

I would bin the drone brood, it will be full of varroa and will only be a drain on the hive. Not a real fan of double brood box methods but then I mostly use langstroth jumbo equipment.

 

[Farmerdresch]

Ok thanks very much for your help

 

[Chris B]

Hold on. It's a huge risk to your healthy colony to unite it to a drone layer like that (newspaper). You might lose your good queen too. Better just to shake out all the bees and remove the hive - guard bees will stop any errant queen getting in but most workers will be accepted when they try to enter and therby you've salvaged the only thing of value remaining in the duff colony.

 

[enrico]

If you unite a drone laying queen with a good hive over newspaper they probably won't chew the paper. Each separate part of the hive has a queen so they have no interest in uniting. You need to find and remove the drone layer before uniting!
E