Stedic
House Bee
Thought it was simple lol.
Hive swarmed early May, out of nowhere as were never that strong and never worked a super. Cell left, queen mates, immediately they made cells. Knock them down, they made more in rainy weather. I couldn’t go in for 10 days - they had swarmed by then. Not ideal, but fortunately I’m in a remote area so swarms haven’t caused any issues.
New new queen was allowed to emerge and mate. After 3 weeks I found eggs and larvae...and charged cells. Knocked them down - same again next week. All capped brood was drone brood. I noticed that there were eggs, but still only on the two frames she had laid. Thought they may be queenless, so have a test frame. They drew two cells.
But, there are still eggs on the original two frames. All in drone cells. Are they queenless?
I wondered if the queen has laid a bit then died - will bees ignore eggs in drone cells if they don’t want drones? If queenless I will unite them - but I want to be sure that I’m not going to introduce a drone layer to a good hive.
Hive swarmed early May, out of nowhere as were never that strong and never worked a super. Cell left, queen mates, immediately they made cells. Knock them down, they made more in rainy weather. I couldn’t go in for 10 days - they had swarmed by then. Not ideal, but fortunately I’m in a remote area so swarms haven’t caused any issues.
New new queen was allowed to emerge and mate. After 3 weeks I found eggs and larvae...and charged cells. Knocked them down - same again next week. All capped brood was drone brood. I noticed that there were eggs, but still only on the two frames she had laid. Thought they may be queenless, so have a test frame. They drew two cells.
But, there are still eggs on the original two frames. All in drone cells. Are they queenless?
I wondered if the queen has laid a bit then died - will bees ignore eggs in drone cells if they don’t want drones? If queenless I will unite them - but I want to be sure that I’m not going to introduce a drone layer to a good hive.