However one hive that over wintered on a brood and a super has two queens....
What to do?
Let them sort it out?
Set up a nuc and gain a colony?
Thanks
It is, as some respondents have already indicated, remarkably common, and in one case we had a few years back we had three queens.
On first examination in the spring we mark all the queens. First examination found a young laying queen, who was promptly marked with the year befores colour......
At next examination upon going through the colony a three year old queens was found, and the person whose writing it was on the hive from the time before was teased about being colourblind or not having their mind on the job last visit......
Then a hatched single queen cell was noticed.............and on the other side of the comb the queen marked last time..........and then the virgin running too.
Hive next door was queenright, so no running queen moved over....
So we had a 3yo Q, her 1yo daughter, who was obviously not satisfactory as they were superceding her right away, and a new virgin, the grandaughter (maybe, who knows, maybe the egg was laid by 'granny') all running at the same time.
Once the new queen mated and laid the two older ones vanished and from then on all was normal.
So...........
My normal conclusion on the multiple queens situation is to leave well alone. Bees supercede for a reason, and that is normally because the incumbent is failing to meet the needs of the colony. She cannot perform as the pressures of the situation demand, so they set about getting a better one. Leave them alone and all will be well. If you DO set up a nuc it is likely you have done one of them with a substandard queen, so either the nuc or the by now weakened colony will struggle.
Off on a tangent.....
Supercedure can actually be provoked by putting an older queen under high pressure to lay. Doing a split whereby all the flying bees come back to a new broodnest containing the old queen and only a little young brood can pressurise her to lay at which point her weakness manifests itself and the bees start supercedure..........if they do not then the old lady is still a good one and you can leave her for a while yet. This scenario of supercedure is very common in our unit.
An old time guy round here used to trigger suercedure by damaging the old queen. Seemed to work fine for him although it would normally be considered cruel (he crippled a leg or two). Never tried it as it just seems alien to my way of thinking.
In general I am not a lover of stock that habitually supercedes rather than comes to swarm point. The latter can easily be exploited to advantage, and, if not excessive or starting at too low a strength level, is a sign of vigour, whereas superceding stock goes through too many cycles of of being low vigour small producers. A one BS brood box bee that never comes under space pressure, and then supercedes, is of little use to me.
