Adding a new Queen

I have read multiple posts but not all and I have a situation. My Queen doing well had my 8 frame deep brood filled with bees, the next box the med filled with honey added the flow super about 2 weeks ago. I saw the Queen she is marked she was on the ground and I put her in. I thought I was gentle but I may have hurt her. Fast forward did my inspection today and bees in the flow super, honey still there but no brood, not larva and I did not see my marked Queen. I double checked all frames. I did see a supercedure cell. So, I jumped and ordered a Queen. I pick her up tomorrow. I have not done this before and hope I made correct decision. I can not loose this hive it was doing too good. I did not want to wait for a Queen to hatch. Should I have? I removed some drone brood and I did not see any. But I have lots of hives around. (Not mine) I am in Hawaii and it is summer . So,I will study up on how to release a Queen and I will put her on brood box. Do I leave the honey and all as is?

Losing your queen is unfortunate, but if you didn’t want to wait for the cell to develop and for the new queen to emerge and mate and return, then adding a new queen is a reasonable thing to do. Once you know the queen you just bought is accepted by the colony I would recommend removing the supercedure cell so that you don’t end up with that developing queen popping out and killing the queen you just bought.

Not to worry, you’ll have more bees very soon after you install the purchased queen.

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I hope it posted now?

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Thank you I am new and I have a nuc that I just grew from a cell. I wish I had enough resources to utilize it. Maybe next year if I can these two to continue to grow.

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I never handle a queen while I am wearing gloves as the gloves take away the sense of touch and it is so easy to squash the queen and cause her death. But doing it ‘my way’ you also need to be able to ignore the odd sting as the bees defend the queen.
To re-queen the colony you have the two choices you have said and both ways should get the same end result, a queen right hive.
If I was going to introduce a new queen I would knock down any and every queen cell in the hive so that the worker bees more readily accept the caged queen as their only option.
If there is young brood and eggs in the frames then there is a second option of letting the workers make a new queen and accepting that there will be time needed till she has emerged, mated and laying and that the number of the bees will drop off in that time.
Cheers

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In Hawaii and added Queen today, studied many videos and basically all I needed to do was to stick her cage in vertically between 2 frames. Oh, maybe I should have smoked but ok did not. At least I can say they were not happy. Initiated with my first in my suit little poke :upside_down_face::honeybee:Removed frame with swarm cell I actually should have just removed cell but live and learn. Anyways put an empty frame in. So I have my deep brood with the Queen cage and my med 8 frame filled with 7 frames of honey and my flow super. The bee person where I got my Queen said to put another med in between the brood and the honey. Any advice?

The bloke you got the queen from might be the best person to listen to because he knows your area better than any of us.

I sell colonies of bees & give lots of free advice, based on our location & time of season. I’m sure the folks who receive my advice go to online forums to check if it is correct, or to get better advice.

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Hi Neuman, so what happened to the frame of brood you removed from the hive? Or shouldn’t I ask. :roll_eyes:
I’m thinking both you and your bees would benefit if you joined a local bee group so you will get a better understanding about hive management and maybe they can guide you with instant advise, maybe over the phone, to be of better help to you

So I live on Kauai a small ruralish island. I live far from most and have tried as hard as I can to bee friend or get a mentor here on island. I even let “friends” keep their bees on my farm to try to learn and ask questions. But people keep to themselves have their own lives and are not interested and I am not in their circle of friends. I have missed the bee club meetings they are far away and I usually am at work or at the farm so hard to get to the other side an hour away. Example of Kauai: I found a Nuc to get started I bought it from my instructor and he directed me to FB sites when I reached out to him for questions. My current NUC, I have been searching a couple of years for, (We can not import Bees into Kauai from anywhere) comes from a guy who I sell my eggs to. He is a bee keeper and I bothered him constantly to keep eyes open for me for bees. He calls me and says he found me a NUC so great I get it. I see on the frames that it comes from our college apiary. Where I took my class and where the bee club is. Also where my friends teach and where I taught. I asked did it come from the college? He says yes. So because it is a small island I go to the college to pick up my Queen. The guy who I get Queen from was the person where my friend got the NUC. He tells me if I want a NUC just contact my friend and he will connect me to him. Seriously.? :slight_smile: I have been looking for years. I learned alot doing all the other stuff but I bought an original Flow hive and have been trying that long to raise bees. All this time, no one knows the college has NUCs? Anyways, I wish I had that mentor and I wish I could make it to the meetings and I wish my beekeeper friends talked as much as this forum or FB pages. So I guess you all become my surrogate mentors. I have had a few colonies, did a cut out, caught a couple swarms and then this year I got this NUC and I talked the people who keep their bees on my farm into sharing a NUC so I have 2 colonies. This is my first colony that ever had honey and my first experience with loosing a Queen and still have the colony. I do have a friend that I contact quickly that is on the mainland but No One here to help and do inspection to give advise. Yep would love that. I thought my friends who I let have their hives here would be that mentor didn’t happen. My bees are here so there you go the story of my life. I am building a notebook and have read alot but it seems to be a repeat of the same stuff and it is experience. I will try to get to meeting at some point in the future and the guy I talked to yesterday was my first great contact experience. He actually liked talking bees so things move slowly and I am not opposed to your advise. I am a nurse of 35 years and you can read how to do stuff for years but until you do it sometimes it does not stick, I actually feel I have more to offer now in conversation and bee exchange. PS I cut the 2 Queen cells out of the frame the one was pretty hard to see if larva was inside ( you see another area of learning how to analyze that)and put frame in freezer to use for my NUC that I will transfer in next week or so to another brood box. There was no brood in my box that is why I got a new Queen. I love the term Queen Right and I hope my hive will be Queen right by tomorrow. Sorry for the novel.

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