Queenless in Texas

Installed 2packages 3 weeks ago in 2 hives. 3 days later 1 queen was out but other had not eaten candy and still n cage. Released her and she crawled into hive but didn’t look good. Now inspected yesterday. Hive with queen that self release healthy with many bees larvae lots of comb. Other hive only 2 frames of bees minimal comb no evidence of queen. What to do? Add new queen? Add another package or nuc? See if remaining bees make a queen?
Thanks! First time to try beekeeping.

If there are no eggs or very young larvae, they can’t make a queen.

If there aren’t many bees, and they are truly queenless, I would not add another queen. There may not be enough bees to take care of her. Your choices in that case would be either merge the colony with the healthy hive, using the newspaper method, or add another package, again using newspaper to merge it with the existing hive.

If the healthy hive is very strong, you could take a frame of brood from it to assist the weak hive. In that case, you may be able to add a queen and rescue the weak hive. :wink:

In Texas, I would not allow the bees to make their own queen. There is too much risk that she will mate with Africanized drones and give you a very nasty hive to deal with… :dizzy_face:

3 Likes

Dawn, good point about Africanized bees. Thanks!

M

image001.jpg

image002.jpg

1 Like