Imagine, I was holding the tooting Queen Jazza in my hand! My grandgirls appropriately named her Jazza (short for Jasmin). Not quite Jazz, but vibrating as any big blow instrument.
She’s black, directing good foraging and overcame chalkbrood fungus very quickly. Never heard her toot again. Or any other queen on the way to the hives.
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Bees are amazing! I’m learning about bees and myself in this honey bee journey.
I finally got threw with the plan my bee friend had and after looking/inspecting my original hive, my split and my new nuke todays results were thus. I have not found eggs in my tooting original hive, the queen free for all mighthave me queenless or she’s not mature or mated yet. My tooting split has eggs, larva and about to have a baby boom. My nuke is about to have a baby boom as well. All my lower brood boxes have built up frames in wax. The bees are working the frames. I’m concerned about my original hive but still have the original queen off site. I’ve put my honey supers on as my clover is about to bloom and the bees have started storing honey on lesser built frames. I’m not sure I’ve set up my nuke up correctly for expansion. Am I to early for my super? I’m ready with another brood box with frozen drawn wax. My blue FH is my nuke, my middle is the split and the yellow FH is my original hive.
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Ok now my original hive has a ton of honey and no eggs. The honey is not capped nor in my flow frames. Ug! Now what? Rob some eggs from my other hive so the bees can make one? Buy a queen? What about all the uncapped honey where brood should be? Challenges till I’m crazed. Sigh…
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Hi Martha, like you say, rob some eggs from your other hive. You could just swap frames. Don’t be concerned about the honey in the frame you put into the queen-right hive. The bees will quickly remove it for the queen to lay in.
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You have two choices about the hive without a queen, you could buy a new queen and introduce her to the hive and for her to be released into it, OR you can take a frame of newly laid eggs and fit that into the middle of the brood box and let the hive produce their own queen. If the donor hive is a quiet strain I would tend to lean towards making you own Queen. You will save some money from buying a new queen and get a lot more satisfaction from doing it yourself. You may prefer to introduce a queen quickly so buying one is your option.
While you consider make yourself a coffee and add honey to it, let us know what you decide ok…
Regards
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That’s the plan and thank you
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Going with the egg transplant thanks!
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I had to suggest both options but making your own queen is the one I would have gone for also. If the virgin queen mates with your drones you should have a queen much like you have already.
Years ago I bought 30 queens from a supplier and ended up with about 20 hives that were very hot to handle so I quickly learned to cull the queens and fit combs of brood so as to make new queens from other quiet hives I had. I did contact the breeder but all I got was apologies.
Now I am happy to do splits and to make my own queens. I am doing my bee keeping at a leisurely pace now and actually enjoying it more.
The false summer here in Queensland Australia is over now and need to pick the days opening for an inspection dependent on the weather with cold nights about 19c, in a month it will drop another 10c for mid winter of about 6 weeks.
Regards
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I just finished finding a frame that was with day old eggs and some larva to place in my 2 brood box honey factory. I also switched to flow hive bottom board hoping to help in the process of the honey getting moisture out and capped. THEN I can figure out the next move. Thank goodness I still have drones in the hive and I also hope there were ample day old eggs to encourage queen production. I found a frame with day old eggs at the bottom of the frame where all the queen cells show up. 
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Now you’re cooking Martha. Time for the bees to produce a queen.
Regards
H[quote=“Peter48, post:69, topic:14668”]
If the virgin queen mates with your drones you should have a queen much like you have already.
[/quote]
This isn’t a reply to you, Peter but I just wanted to highlight what you said. Martha’s virgin queen will mate with other drones not her own. Virgins fly to distant DCAs. There’s a very good video I can link to discussing a study that was done. The chances of one drone mating are slim. The drones fly to areas nearby so that they can maximise their flying time. A virgin is shepherded further away and she will be mated fairly quickly and has to fly only once. Its a way of avoiding inbreeding. Some races of bee will utilise apiary vicinity mating in bad weather.
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@Dee I can’t find where I said a queen mates with only one drone as that is simply not correct. So maybe I am being misquoted. As Martha has 4 hives are you saying that her virgin queen can not mate with drones from her own hives?? As in her as in Martha, so I will stand by what I said, and drones is plural last time I checked…
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I din’t say a virgin queen can’t mate with drones from the same apiary, just that it is not commonplace.
If you have a little time to catch up with modern research this is an excellent lecture explaining the bees’ strategy to avoid inbreeding.
You misunderstand me…probably my english
What I meant was the chances of any one drone mating with any queen is very slim as there are lots of drones chasing few queens whereas a virgin queen is mated easily by lots of drones. Watch the lecture…it’s fascinating
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I saw a lecture saying that queens take off to a place where drones collect or the foreign drones fly into a different hive and then she takes her mating flight ensuring genetics are not inbred.
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That is ideally what happens Martha but when I had 50+ hives in one area there was sometimes lots of drones flying above the hives, at a guess 400 drones or more, and my opinion was that the queens might not be all that cautious of which drone might be waiting his turn. Maybe there was some inbreeding which may have lead to what we call a slow hive, That is just my opinion and look forward to others thoughts.
Regards
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Yes they are called DCA or drone congergation areas and are in the same place year after year. It’s thought that because drones have to stay in the air for as long as possible to maximise their chances they remain in DCAs close to their hives. It is also thought that queens are taken further away by experienced foragers who know where the DCAs are. These are the mating swarms we see. Drones are allowed free passage to any hive so theoretically I suppose they could hive hop to fly further but who knows.
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If all goes well I should have a new queen May 11th. When is the ideal time to see if the bees made a queen cell?
I would do a quick check 3 days before she is due to hatch, confirm there is queen cells and close it up. Check for brood a week after she was due to hatch and all going well you will find newly laid eggs. On your next inspection destroy any queen cells that have not been knocked down already and you are on your way.
You will need to watch the brood area but the chance for swarming with a new young queen is low, as the queen ages so the swarm risk increases. Increase the brood laying area if it is needed with a comb of honey which the bees will relocate the honey if they want to increase the colony.
We are having a re-run of another false summer, 28c (76F) today and the hives are very active.I did a hive inspection today because of the warm weather with no smoker, no gloves and no veil, I was ready to close up if needed but the girls showed absolutely no interest. Just love the Italian strain…
Regards
Hi Peter, I think it must have been the weather why they were so docile. I did a complete brood box change of a strong colony yesterday. They weren’t the slightest bit angry.
That colony could be ready. I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to hold off until spring. I see they are more interested in collecting honey than making brood. They are making some brood, but not like they would be in spring.
On the back of my ute, the bees are more interested in collecting propolis off the bee boxes than the leftover honey from the tray.
I’ll start thinking about reducing some entrances. I’ll get going. cheers