Queenless nuc plus swarm

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Following on from posting my question about queen cells in the introductions section yesterday I can add a little more;

Last night we looked in the hive containing the queenless nuc that we had previously united with the swarm of our own bees. It is now some weeks since either have had a queen and we have been told that the latest queen cells that were produced would contain drones as there was no other brood present. We cut them open and the pupae did not look like queens. Last week we put in two frames of brood from our other hives, so were hoping to see queen cells last night. There was one queen cup and what looked like some very small queen cells, nothing like those we have seen so far. We intend to look again on Friday to check for progress.

This morning I was reading the article on Queen Cells by Wally Shaw from April BBKA News. in it he describes that the presence of queen pheromone would prevent the bees from making a queen and it led me to consider this. When we caught our swarm our mentor gave us an empty frame of drawn comb and had attached a commercial swarm lure to it. The swarming took place on July 2nd and we did not remove the lure until a couple of weeks ago. Is it possible that there is still pheromone remaining on that frame and might make the bees reluctant to requeen themselves?

Any advice would be gratefully received - thank you.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

When we caught our swarm our mentor gave us an empty frame of drawn comb and had attached a commercial swarm lure to it. The swarming took place on July 2nd and we did not remove the lure until a couple of weeks ago. Is it possible that there is still pheromone remaining on that frame and might make the bees reluctant to requeen themselves?

No - these commercial swarm lures just contain lemongrass oil and maybe a pinch of fairy dust so would have no effect at all on them making QCs

 

[CLB]

Thank you