So this is my third year beekeeping and I have two hives. One of them threw a swarm. Unfortunately I caught this swarm very late because it was very well hidden, this was 3.5 weeks ago. I didn’t check the parent hive of that swarm for brood because the weather had been bad and I didn’t expect them to swarm. So I don’t know if they had brood or larvae when they swarmed. It has been some time and I still don’t see any new eggs or brood in the parent colony. They have made some queencells at the bottom of the frame and at least one was filled with an almost mature queen larva but the cell got ripped open on the side. Is this hive hopeless queenless or is there still hope?
I also have another hive. This hive started making swarmcells so I did a split and combined the split (with queen) with the swarm, because the queen in the swarm had drowned in the sugar syrup. This was two weeks ago. But that parent colony doesn’t have any eggs or brood either and the swarm cells have gone but there seems to be no queen. The queen in the split/swarm has also died, at least, I didn’t see any eggs or brood in the split/swarm. So I have 3 hives that appear to be queenless. Is there still hope for one of the hives or do I have to introduce new queens?
Welcome to the forum. There is hope for all the colonies if you intervene. What I would do is try to find someone who can sell you 3 frames of brood in all stages. The main stage being new fertile eggs. One for each colony. I don’t like introducing queens to queenless colonies in case they get rejected, which turns into a costly exercise. I prefer to let colonies make their own queen.
@JeffH I will see what I can get in my area. Thx for your help.
Sounds like you have 2 beekeeping seasons under your belt…have you had an effective varroa mite control program in place?
The effect of viruses from the varroa mite result in abnormalities in queen mating, queen longevity and queen fertility…my observations.
Your strongest hives (swarmers) often are magnets for the varroa mites.