Queen outside the hive, going for a stroll

I appreciate your response, I was thinking about adding a frame with brood but had not done it yet.

My question now is,do I leave original colony bees on the brood frame or brush them off.

I’d leave them on there but just make sure the queen isn’t on that frame.

If you can’t be sure then you could shake/brush all the bees off the donor frame then place it above the queen excluder (if you’re using one) in the donor hive temporarily until nurse bees return to it.

Putting in a frame of brood without nurse bees may stretch the recipient hives ability to care for it.

Ok. Thankyou. I was worried the bees wouldn’t except each other.

Most of the bees on a frame of brood will be nurse bees, which don’t usually become defensive. So you probably won’t have fighting.

@Eva is right that nurse bees will normally be accepted, When I have a hive go too strong I just take a brood frame with the bees on it making sure the queen is not on it and donate it to a weaker colony and be accepted. Sometimes I have started a new hive with frames of brood and nurse bees from a couple of strong hives and no issues, I don’t know at what stage bees learn to fight each other.
Cheers

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I am a new beekeeper in New Zealand and what with Varroa and everything else that can go wrong with a hive,I have been doing regular inspections to keep an eye on things and learn as I go, I am also lucky to have great mentors from our bee club who have taken great pains to keep me on the right track. However on the last two inspections I could not find the queen, the next day I noticed a group of bees on the gravel about a metre from the hive and beside them a dead bee. I picked up the dead bee and low and behold it was my queen (marked) and she was wingless. The queen was not marked when I got the Nuc and I wonder if this contributed to her rejection. I am mystified as she had been laying well and this was about a month after marking.

I doubt marking a queen correctly on her thorax is the cause, I have all my queens marked and will still be the queen of the hive till I terminate her. Your queen was rejected by the colony but I doubt that was a result of her being marked. Interesting her wings had been removed and look forward to tohers input about that.
Cheers

I feel like I am crashing a party I was not invited to, as I am not a beekeeper. but I am seeking a beekeepers advice… I am outside just having a smoke when all of a sudden I see this unusually long bee after a quick google search and photo comparisons she checks every mark to be a queen. my question is why is she just walking around on the sidewalk near the garden? and should I help her? where might the hive be? I wish I didnt see the poor thing im going to lose sleep over this! thanks again
sorry to intrude

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Welcome to the Flow forum! We are happy to chat with anybody who is interested in bees, even if just in passing. :wink:

Did you, by any chance, take a photo? If you did, you can upload it by using the 7th icon from the left in the message typing window. That would help a lot.

If not, well, a queen on her own is not going to survive, whatever you do. She needs attendants and the warmth of a hive. Some queens are lost on mating flights - they get exhausted or attacked. The other possibility is that she wasn’t a honey bee, but some other insect that looks very similar. Even beekeepers can be confused about mimicking insects sometimes!

Either way, I wouldn’t worry about it. There wasn’t anything that you could do. It is great that you care about bees though, thank you! :heart_eyes:

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@Evilyn_Lestrange sometimes Hairy Flower Wasps can be mistaken for a long bee. They are very long and have different wings. Here’s an example Hairy Flower Wasp - Backyard Buddies

Best not touched :wink:

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Evilyn, I think it’s cool that you took notice and took time to see what might be done :hugs: