Do I re-queen this hive while I still have time?

So, I have 2 hives in northern CA. Winter’s aren’t very cold here- last year my bees never quite went broodless even in the middle of winter. I overwintered both hives, then managed to kill off BOTH my queens by experimenting with a new medium for applying oxalic acid to the hive when their mite counts got to threshold in mid-spring. So, both of these queens are this year’s queens.

Hive 1 is doing fine. Lots of brood, harvested over 40lb of honey from it this year.

Hive 2 had a big mite count spike just before re-queening. I got it under control with MAQS, just before the weather got too hot for those. However, the new queen never quite recovered all the way (or was just never as strong a queen to begin with). She may even be a supesedure queen that didn’t mate well, as I had to hunt down supersedure cells and destroy them when I put the new queen in, and I could have missed one. The new queen was unmarked, so I wouldn’t know if she had been ousted.

This entire year the mite counts have been good to marginal, with me doing treatments when they get a little high and keeping things under control, but her brood has always been mediocre at best and is now pretty wimpy. She definitely is present and laying, just not very well.

Should I continue to give her a chance, or re-queen now so I have a strong queen going onto the spring buildup? I have local queen breeders that I can just drive over and pick up a queen from for $37, so it isn’t too big a deal, but I hate to kill off a queen who is still laying even poorly. What do you think?

Requeen if you can. This is a great time of year if you have a good supplier near by. My September purchased queen (ohbees.com) from last year is awesome, and this hive gave us around 60lb of honey this year - remarkable for San Diego!

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