Hello,
I think I lost my queen about 10 days ago. I believe the colony is in the process of requeening, but I won’t know if that is successful until I can back in, once the weather improves.
Question: by the time the queen is mated and starts laying, and these hatch, I’m guessing it will be a good 6 - 7 weeks post the death of the queen. Will i have any bees left by that time?
What has been others experience on total bee colony decline when losing a queen?
Provided they successfully rear and mate a new queen they will survive.
They have been dealing with this problem for many millions of years and know what they are doing.
I work on about 4 weeks after the death of a queen to a new laying queen and the bee number will decline over that time but as there will be a lot of space in the brood for the queen to lay in they will quickly pick up again. Sometimes for some reason a colony seem to be not able to produce a new queen, sometimes they don’t even produce queen cells, so in that case you have two options, to either buy a new queen or buy a frame of eggs. A much better option is to have a second hive so you have the resources to make a new queen by switching a frame of brood if needed. Having a second hive doesn’t take much extra time to do inspections as the smoker is already going and you have your bee suit on already.
Cheers David
Thats awesome. Thanks for your guidance
Cedar and his sister did a video on doing a split a few weeks ago and they talk about the time it takes for each stage of the process as the split generates a new queen. The video gave me confidence about doing a split myself as I went from a single hive to 2.