What will a queen do if her colony dies around her?

[SunnyRaes]

We bought a couple of Buckfast queens from Fragile Planet a few weeks back and made up nucs for both with brood and bees donated from other hives on 26 June.

One nuc was (hopefully successfully) merged with a queenless hive on Monday - it looked perfectly healthy with brood in all stages and the queen was seen.

The other nuc however isn't so happy it seems. I've noticed it appeared to have no bees coming and going where other hives were busy. *I* (the non-beek) opened it up tonight in lieu of the resident beek who wasn't well just to check that there were indeed still bees in the nuc.

It was clear all was not well. Whilst the queen was seen and seemed healthy, there were very very few other bees on 2 brood frames, with much of the sealed brood uncovered and what appeared to be partially emerged bees on some - possibly dead (I was trying to be as quick as possible). Now we are sure that the queen was laying well on 1 July at the last inspection, and bees were across the 3 frames of brood. We have been feeding, and there are 3 frames of stores so food isn't the issue.

The first question is, what has gone wrong?

Is it possible that the nuc we made up didn't have enough young bees on it to sustain the brood, or that we are in a dip between the old bees and the new bees? I would have thought that the brood that was added would have hatched OK and be maintaining the colony until the new queens brood matured?

One possible factor might be that we had been moving the nuc earlier this week using the foot-a-day rule with the aim of merging at a later date, which might have brought it into conflict with one of the other hives, meaning the flying bees would fly there rather than the nuc.

The second question is, what can we do to salvage the situation?

What will the queen do if the rest of the colony effectively dies off around her? My gut, non-beek feeling is that, whilst the bees that are there seem perfectly healthy, there are no longer enough bees in this colony to sustain itself, but I might be wrong.

As suggested, we were planning to merge this nuc into an existing Q- colony (however this is now drone laying, so this is no longer an option and it'll be chucked into a hedge).

We want to reduce the number of hives we have before the winter anyway (from 6 to 4 or 5), so we can aim to merge the nuc into a queen-right colony once we get our spare brood box back after the drone laying hive has gone. However will such a small colony survive a merge, especially as it's the nuc buckfast queen we want to keep (rather than the swarmy but healthy colonies queen) I mean for starters, surely moving a weak nuc into a brood box isn't going to help?

Will the nuc be able to survive another week or 2 if needs be?

Could we do anything to bolster the nuc?

Could we swap queens out?

Anyone got any suggestions???

Just to make matters worse, a wasp flew straight into the heart of the nuc tonight and I couldn't get to it, grrr!

 

[ratcatcher]

What will the queen do if the rest of the colony effectively dies off around her? !

only a newbie myself so could be wrong, but thinking that the only thing a queen does is lay egg, her attendants feed,groom,clean her, therefore they die, she die's ?????

 

[REDWOOD]

No bees going in and out means no pollen for brood which is probably why the lack of brood, don't think you had enough young and old bees in the nuc, as you said flying bees returned to original hive. Check brood for disease if its ok then a frame of emerging broad would help along with a pollen substitute

 

[Rich0909]

Probably just not enough bees. If you are going to shake out the other hive how about placing the nuc where that hive was to pick up the flying bees from that hive? Probably a reason not to I haven't though of?

Rich

 

[SunnyRaes]

I thought about doing that, but would a small nuc be able to accept a sudden influx of foreign bees, possibly including a drone layer or laying worker?

 

[REDWOOD]

I thought about doing that, but would a small nuc be able to accept a sudden influx of foreign bees, possibly including a drone layer or laying worker?

LW hive is not an option

 

[SunnyRaes]

Even if tipped out far (50-100 feet) from their original location? Just to be clear, we aren't suggesting merging the nuc with the laying worker hive, but tipping the laying worker hive out and letting them return to the stand, which now has the nuc on it.

If the answer is still no, then why not? (for my understanding as a non-beek! ) It was an idea I guess! In which case we will just dump the Q- hive over the end of the garden as originally planned and not move the nuc onto that stand. The other hives will be able to absorb these bees more easily, and we will then reuse that stand in a few weeks once the Q- hive bees have long forgotten their old home.

I think the beek might be able to add a frame of emerging brood and hopefully a frame of pollen if we can nick it from another hive tomorrow. Might buy us some time!

 

[Into the lions den]

Assuming no major underlying issue ( the description COULD be that of a varroa collapse, so best to check for that first as the unhatched brood could then be hoatching with mites) then I would recommend simply changing places with a strong hive and giving both hives a feed. A proper feed that is, not a pint or the likes, at least a gallon. Keeps the bees busy and suppresses their resistance to having this operation carried out on them.

 

[mbc]

Also be aware that it could be the queens fault, a colony with a crap queen often bleeds lot s of bees to neighbours with a more positive outlook