RE-Queen Drone Layers

[tkwinston4]

Funny you say this, I was pissed with a colony last year after being Queenless for about 6 weeks did what you said as a last resort and it worked first time.

Busy Bee

Busy Bee you have given me hope. My hive is now quite dimished and i have tried getting rid of the laying worker twice and it hasnt worked but having read the previous two comments i may well give it a go with a new queen.

They are quite a small colony now do you think i should move them into a nuc for the winter if i do go down the requeen route?

Also they are lacking in stores - i was just going to leave them to die out - so should i feed them from now till next spring if they do accept the queen?

Cheers Busy Bee, I had given up completely on them but now they have a little hope

 

[Bcrazy]

Hi Busy Bee,
What was the time scale from your hive going queenless to the workers begining to lay?
When the hive went queenlees in the begining a frame eggs should have been placed in the hive.
I do think there is a large time span before the workers start to lay from the colony going queenless.
this is my opinion, i feel it bad beekeeping to allow any colony to allow workers to start laying eggs, was there inspections carried out , if so surely it would have been noticed that the colony was queenless.

Mo

 

[Busy Bee]

Hi,

Timescale could be about 8 weeks. Believe me I tried everything, they did things that could not be explained but you must understand it was the worse weather for a very long time over 90 consective days of rain. Hardly good queen rearing weather.

Busy Bee

 

[susbees]

Hi,

Timescale could be about 8 weeks. Believe me I tried everything, they did things that could not be explained but you must understand it was the worse weather for a very long time over 90 consective days of rain. Hardly good queen rearing weather.

Busy Bee

...so that's where the rain went. Here in Wales we've had such a dry Spring/early summer. Had about an inch and a half in the last three or so days and most of it's gone straight down the hill :/.

 

[Busy Bee]

...so that's where the rain went. Here in Wales we've had such a dry Spring/early summer. Had about an inch and a half in the last three or so days and most of it's gone straight down the hill :/.

Sorry LAST YEAR!, any way its been raining here every day for about 10 days and I mean rain, sh ite loads of its.

Busy Bee

 

[Mike a]

Tomorrow I hope to find out how the two colonies which had drone laying queens are doing. I de-queened them both about 5 weeks ago and tried the test frame method with no joy for 3 weeks, last week I gave them both a new queens in cages and left the caps on covering the candy plugs.

All being well I can remove the caps if they have stopped trying to ball the cages if this fails then its as both colonies are or hopefully were evil.

 

[Bcrazy]

OK
Sorry for the harshness of my answer about inspections as I do not take into account the weather in other parts of the UK. I have a Nuc which has a drone laying queen and i have introduced a queen cell from another Nuc so I'll let you know how I get on . Inspection tomorrow. (Sunday)


Mo

 

[Poly Hive]

When Q rearing WEATHER rules. Totally.

PH

 

[Bcrazy]

Thanks for that Poly Hive, for one moment I thought that Finman was back again.


Mo

 

[Poly Hive]

Lost me here?

Or were you trying to make fun?

If so another spectacular failure!

PH

 

[Mike a]

Update

Both colonies seem to be pretty much ignoring both cages now with just the odd one or two bees crawling over outside. Both had 2 dead bees inside, one of which I couldn't be 100% sure if it was the queen or not as I was in heavy shade at the time and I didn't want to shake the cage. I've uncapped the candy plug in both and placed the cages back in between the frames and I'll inspect them again for signs of eggs and larvae in two weeks. If this fails then both will be moved to my other apiary to be combined with other colonies for the remaining part of the summer flow.

 

[Poly Hive]

Good BCrazy because that says you were trying to take the "P"

Good night.

Ph