Opinions Queen D58! Time to go ! What would you do ?

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Drone Bee
Joined
May 7, 2013
Messages
1,251
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51
Location
Yorkshire Wolds
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
enough (but all insured!)
Looks like Queen D58 (that's what she's labelled), is doomed. Prime swarm caught May 29th.

This was a very large swarm, hived into national hive standard brood box, it's been a very strong hive, but I always feared D58 was not really laying well.

I thought maybe she had a break in laying, so gave her the benefit of the doubt, (14 days ago) she is still present (I've seen her today) but the workers are filling the brood boxes and super with stores, faster than what she's doing!

No eggs today, a few capped cells but not many.

I've already extracted BB, (7 days ago) to leave space, but this queen seems to have run out of steam... and bb full again, despite supers on, which are full, and the 2nd is not full, but clearly they would rather fill bb, than go up!

So options

1, Extract (again) brood frames and wait, she if something happens
2. Gate post, re-queen
3. Unite (gate post for queen)
4. Test frame

or other.... could remove her, stick he in a mating nuc, see what happens... re-queen.

Andy
 
Q isn’t laying, so maybe they have no reason to bring stores up.

I’d re-Q.
 
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