Queen stopped laying

[keithgrimes]

Nothing that i've read has covered this and I would welcome your comments. On June 27 my nuc swarmed. I captured the swarm and rehived it with marked queen, attendant bees and a couple of frames of brood, sealed and unsealed. The queen carried on laying for about a week and then simply stopped. No new brood at all for over a month. Consequently the colony is dwindling as the old brood hatches and bees die. I am going through the process of requeening now but wondered if the experts out there could shed any light. Was it something I did? (it usually bloody is). I am told that this was a 2010 queen, and I have full faith in the supplier. Buckfast (ish) very calm bees. The only difference in their circumstance is that they swarmed from an OMF WBC and I hived them in a solid floor national.

 

[SimonB]

As a 2 week old beek I don't know if I'm any position to comment, all I would say is that in the July edition of BeeCraft I recall one of the articles mentioning that dependent on flow a queen may reduce laying, and in some cases cease altogether.

 

[Mike a]

Double check the brood frames to see if the cells are empty and polished, if the colony has been fed you may find the queen has no where to lay or you may need to swap in a frame of eggs, larvae and sealed brood to help out but it is getting a little late in the season for this if the weather turns and we have a normal wet and windy autumn if there is no improvement by September you may need to consider combining them with another colony.

Although I've read some where Buckfast queens are not that prolific and can stop laying completely if there is no pollen coming in. They build up in time for the main flow then return to small colony sizes for winter time. May be some one who has Buckfast queens can give you better advice.

 

[Midland Beek]

Bees do not just become queenless. Expect there to be a virgin in there. Use test frame.

 

[keithgrimes]

yes there are cells empty and polished. I've despatched the old queen and will be introducing new queen tomorrow. Later I will re combine with the original donor colony (and cross all my digits). There's syrup stores and pollen too.