Spring queenless hive - donate brood and queen cells?

[Jengles]

Hi all,

We had a lovely strong hive going into winter but on first inspection 2 weeks ago saw only a few capped drone cells, a few sporadic patches of eggs and what looked like attempted empty queencells. We weren't sure if it was laying workers or drone laying queen (or a very early swarm?) but we gave them a frame of eggs and young larvae from another hive.

A week later, annoyingly, there were no queen cells on the donated frame but several empty play cups on other frames, and no eggs seen anywhere. We donated another frame of eggs.

Today we looked in again and still no good queen cells or fresh eggs! Does this mean it was laying workers, or is there a useless queen in there somewhere?

We split another hive a little over a week ago and they had multiple capped queen cells over several frames, so we gave the duff hive a frame with three queen cells (approx 9 days old) and capped worker brood, along with the attendant nurse bees. We put this frame between the two previously donated frames with now capped brood.

Are they likely to accept the queen cells or is it a lost cause? Would it be best to check in another week?

I know the advice for queenlessness in spring is to shake out or combine with a queenright hive, but this hive is packed with bees and it seemed like a shame to give up on them.

Any advice gratefully recieved!

 

[Ian123]

I’d suspect with the poor hive not making cells there was a diff queen running about. As you’ve now donated cells they should accept and I’d leave for the subsequent virgin to mate!.. you’ve pretty much done all you can.

 

[Jengles]

I’d suspect with the poor hive not making cells there was a diff queen running about. As you’ve now donated cells they should accept and I’d leave for the subsequent virgin to mate!.. you’ve pretty much done all you can.

Thank you!