Not queenless, but no brood

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Hello everyone! I hope all is well wherever you are! I need some help with a swarm I caught on June 1st from one of my other hives.

Some backstory; found a small-ish swarm (about the size of an American football) on the side of one of my hives one afternoon. I began scooping bees with my hands into a new box with drawn out comb, and found the queen. I caught her and placed her in a clip between two frames, and released her a few hours later. There were about 4 frames worth of bees in the box with her. My plan was to leave them alone for 10 days, but then a bear paid us a visit on June 2nd and knocked that hive over and upside down. After the bear left, my husband and I went out and put everything back together and scooped as many of the bees back in that we could.

On June 4th I checked them to look for the queen, which I did find. She looked fine to me, no damage that I could see. I gave them some sugar syrup, closed it up and left them alone until today, June 11th.

During my inspection today, I found the queen and again she looked okay… there was new nectar and some pollen (although I’m not sure if that was leftover pollen in the drawn out comb that I’m using from the previous colony), but absolutely no brood. There is plenty of empty drawn out comb her her to lay in, but no capped brood, no larvae, no eggs. There was about 2 1/2 frames of adult bees in the hive today. Traffic is slow at the entrance, I haven’t really seen any pollen going in which makes sense with the lack of brood. I gave the bees a pollen patty to hopefully encourage the queen to start laying, but I’m not sure if it will help.

So I’m not sure what to do with this hive. I have a few options spinning in my head but I don’t know which plan is best, or if there’s another option I haven’t thought of.

Option 1: Should I just requeen this hive and leave everything else as is and let them sort it out?

Option 2: Pinch this queen :disappointed: and combine the bees with another hive.

Option 3: Take one frame of capped brood and one frame of open brood with either very young larvae and/or eggs from another hive/hives and donate it to this one. I’m a little nervous to do this because I don’t want to sacrifice a good hive to save this struggling one… last year I borrowed three or for frames of brood from a very strong hive to donate to a weaker one, and the donor hive ended up absconding before winter (the “weaker” one survived, and is the hive that I was able to make a split from and then it also produced this swarm two weeks after the split).

So that’s what I have going on right now. Any advice on how to move forward and save this tiny colony? This was my first swarm catch and I was so excited about it… I’ll be so bummed if it doesn’t work out! But I want to do what’s best for the bees.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and for any thoughts and advice!!

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If she was a virgin it could still be a while. Can you donate some frames of capped brood to keep them going? If she’s not laying in more 2 weeks, I’d pinch her and combine.

If you don’t think they’re to be strong enough to endure a dearth in the later summer, or to make it through winter anyway then you might as well cut your losses save yourself the energy and combine now.

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Yeah I think combining now might be the way to go. If I were to keep them as their own colony and donate brood, how many frames should be donated? Then I should wait about a week to see if they’re making me queen cells off the new eggs, correct?

This queen is not a virgin, she appears to be pretty well-mated… big fat abdomen and she was laying beautifully in the old hive before she swarmed out.

Ugh I hate to pinch her :sob: this is so sad! Isn’t there some sort of rehab program for queens? What if I left them to die out peacefully together (I’m an empath, I’m not sure how well I would do with killing her :see_no_evil:). Is it possible that she and the bees became too stressed out from being attacked by the bear the day after swarming? Just trying to get an idea of why they’re struggling so much.

Thanks for your thoughts

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I hate killing queens too. In fact I hate squishing anything except for small hive beetles! I solve my queen issue by catching her (queen catcher or clip), then putting that in the freezer. It is one of the methods recommended by the USDA for killing bees humanely. In my mind, I tell myself that if she can survive in there for 24 hours, I will release her. I haven’t had a survivor yet… :wink:

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Oh wow this is a great idea! Thank you for sharing this, Dawn!

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Hiya Erin, I’d just add a frame of eggs and brood and look for QC’s after a week or so.
Don’t forget the queen would be older and have just been on a diet for the move. If the bees decide to requeen, and they know best, they will show you on the donated frame.
I think that replacing the queen is a commercial idea and although does have its place, for backyarders like ourselves where honey production isn’t the priority, queen replacement is overrated and working around it is a good tool to have in your kit.:wink:

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I totally agree!! Another local beekeeper also suggested giving them less space. Since there are only 2 1/2 frames of bees, they might be reluctant to raise brood because they might not be able to heat such a large space with so few bees. So today I’m going to switch their box out for a nuc, and give them a frame of brood from another colony…. Will try to get one with capped and open brood with very young larvae and/or eggs. I think first priority would be capped brood thiugh to increase their population.

This queen wasn’t that old… I had made a split because I saw a swarm cell with a big larva inside, so I took the old queen and out her in a new box with half the bees, and left the queen cell in the original hive. About a week later I checked again and found two more emergency cells and like 7 more swarm cells in the queenless hive. I found the virgin queen some time after and just let them do their thing for a bit. It was only two weeks after I made the split (to hopefully prevent a swarm) that they swarmed anyway. Haha so she was new, and they didn’t swarm very far… they were balled up on the corner of their own original hive, and I did find the queen in that ball. It was interesting lol

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