Queen nuc'd May 1st - no laying queen as yet

[RichardK]

A month ago I had a colony making swarm preparations. On:

• May 1st I nuc'd the queen
• May 6th knocked down all queen cells & introduced my own grafted queen cell. Emergence should have been May 9th.
• May 7th left for 7 days
• May 14th - quick look. The introduced queen cell had been completely torn down so I've no clues if a queen emerged or not. I also found another queen cell I must have missed (or they build after) from which a queen had emerged through the now open end.
• May 24th - introduced frame of young larvae & eggs from another hive to test for queenlessness.
• May 29th - no queen cells drawn out

Weather hasn't been great for a couple of weeks (cloudy and often rain from midday) but all other queens (5) from the same batch of cells have all started laying with the final one being in the last few days (eggs seen on 29th - yesterday). I haven't really looked for a queen in the hive although yesterday I did go through all the frames looking for any signs of eggs...nothing.

What would you do in this situation?

 

[Swarm]

You should have left them a week before breaking down cells, they have their own queen in there. I would check again in a week or two.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

What would you do in this situation?

be patient and wait at least another fortnight

 

[RichardK]

You should have left them a week before breaking down cells, they have their own queen in there. I would check again in a week or two.

Thanks for that - I'll leave them be for a bit and see what happens.

 

[RichardK]

You were bang on the money @[SIZE=4]Swarm[/SIZE] & @[SIZE=4]jenkinsbrynmair[/SIZE]

Today I found a mated queen with eggs and larvae. Happy days.