Queenless hive for months

[Erichalfbee]

Usually the size of the cell the egg is in tells you which is which. In a normal hive drone eggs are laid in larger cells. Unless you have a drone laying queen laying drone eggs in worker sized cells.
You can see in this picture the unoccupied drone sized cells (to the left) are bigger than the worker cells (on the right).

Easy to just pick up a frame check it has eggs and think no more

 

[thibault]

I decided to combine the Q+ nuc and the Q- hive, had my plan, everything ready, but you are all gonna laugh, when I opened the Q- hive last week end and inspected the frame where I had put the strip test, I saw eggs, yes, eggs in cells, not multiple eggs in one cell as one would expect with drone laying workers, but 1 egg per cell. I was shocked lool, and the queen cell is still there and nicely capped. These bees are amazing, you plan things, and they always come up with something different.
My theory : they managed to raise a queen last September when the queen died (I remember seeing a nice queen cell) , but she never got the opportunity to mate, then when I did put a bit of brood in the hive 13 days ago, somehow the virgin queen decided to start to lay probably between last Friday and Sunday , but I think it will be drone brood, lets see.
Please let me know what you guys think.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Please let me know what you guys think.

It sometimes happens that placing a frame of brood into a colony that has been queenless for a long time triggers workers to start laying and, they can lay one egg per cell perfectly placed in the bottom of the cells as if layed by a queen.

 

[Levitt53]

I decided to combine the Q+ nuc and the Q- hive, had my plan, everything ready, but you are all gonna laugh, when I opened the Q- hive last week end and inspected the frame where I had put the strip test, I saw eggs, yes, eggs in cells, not multiple eggs in one cell as one would expect with drone laying workers, but 1 egg per cell. I was shocked lool, and the queen cell is still there and nicely capped. These bees are amazing, you plan things, and they always come up with something different.
My theory : they managed to raise a queen last September when the queen died (I remember seeing a nice queen cell) , but she never got the opportunity to mate, then when I did put a bit of brood in the hive 13 days ago, somehow the virgin queen decided to start to lay probably between last Friday and Sunday , but I think it will be drone brood, lets see.
Please let me know what you guys think.

Blimey why can they never let you think that you know what your doing. My test frame went in on Sunday but the forecast is not good now and we're away Sunday and Monday so I think I'm just going to have to leave them to it as I don't want to disturb a virgin queen. If they are queen + or queen - I don't think there is much else I can do. I'm probably going to leave them for six weeks and if they are still queen - I'll unite the left overs with my other hive.

 

[enrico]

thank you for these precious advice, so hard to choose though, I like the second option, but scared to combine the nuc with the big hive (never done it before), any risk of fighting between the bees or queen getting killed?
I have read that being queenless for months and smoking them a lot while doing the transfer should do the trick.
Don't see how to implement the newspaper method with a 14x12 brood box as I don't have another 14x12 brood box, and I am as well moving away from it, all my new equipment is standard national.
As well is it still too cold to do this, pulling out frames of brood and transferring them...?

A squirt of air freshener in both hives and just add the frame. Trust me it works. No failures, no fighting. It is so easy and ylet's ou move frames around willy jolly
E

 

[pargyle]

Well ... after three frames with eggs in them (Ok - the first one was all drone eggs so let's not count that as that was me ..) so they've had two more frames - capped the brood - mainly worker brood - perfectly but no queen cells ... twice they have done this.

Went in today ... and they are docile, storing nectar and pollen like it's their last meal - not showing any signs of being queenless - but no eggs... Nix .. No laying workers - no drone brood. I really don't get it. Still plenty of bees in there and no signs of robbing.

So ..one last chance - today I have them another frame with eggs and tiny larvae - some capped worker brood on it so they will have new bees in a few days as well. After this, if they don't start trying to make a queen they are going to get combined with another hive ...

Perhaps they know something I don't ? Perhaps they knew it was too early for a queen to be successfully mated ? Who knows ?.. I've also been through all the other hives today and apart from two uncharged play cups there's no signs of swarming in any of them ...secretly I was rather hoping that, perhaps a queen cell or two might be of use but they haven't obliged there either.

Finished off adding second supers to all hives now - first ones very heavy but onlly about a third of each frame capped. Not been much rape around me this year and I can't smell that distinctive odour you get when they are on the rape so I'm hoping it's going to be a nice spring multifloral honey again.