Hi All,
Im managing what I thought was a hopelessly queen less hive. There is no queen, no eggs or larvae. I did an inspection and found two queen cups with royal jelly but I couldn’t see the egg ( which could be difficult). Is it possible that these cups have royal jelly and no eggs?
Hi Mike, I’ve seen cells with royal jelly, without a grub. I assumed that the bees removed the grub for some reason.
If your colony is hopelessly queenless, I wouldn’t hesitate to give it a frame of brood in all stages, especially with worker eggs. Look in 5 days for queen cells. If no joy, give them another frame. Keep doing this until they start building queen cells. It WILL happen sooner or later. The critical mass of the bees from the frames of brood you donate will want the colony to be queen-rite, so therefore they will eventually start building queen cells in one of the brood frames you donate.
H Jeff. I have given the bees a frame of eggs from another hive but 5 days later when I checked the whole frame was filled with honey save for a few drone cells on the bottom.
When I did that inspection I found the queen cups in question.
So I have now put a frame of capped brood and another frame of eggs in the hive again. I’m a bit concerned there may not be enough nurse bees, which is why I put the capped brood in. I’ll let you know what happens.
Yes Mike, the nurse bees are the key. I was tossing up whether to edit my post to mention that. The nurse bees would emerge out of the brood in all stages. Adding that full frame of capped brood will be a great help.
Have you seen how we add nurse bees to a colony? It’s very simple & pretty to watch.
I haven’t seen the nurse bee video. Where do i find that?
It is in a video that @Semaphore posted a couple of years ago. I can’t remember the video, however I’ve adopted the strategy & talked about it since.
It involves shaking bees (minus the queen) off brood frames onto a sheet or towel on the ground. Immediately the older bees will return to their original hive, leaving the nurse bees behind. You can shake bees from more than one hive into the same spot. After about 5 or 10 minutes, we simply place the brood box entrance adjacent to the cluster of nurse bees. Almost instantly, the nurse bees will march towards the entrance, which is pretty to watch, plus they will be readily received by the receiving colony. Make sure that the roof is on, so that the maximum hive odor wafts out of the entrance.
I have found that quite a few bees return to their original hives the following day, so therefore I tend to shake more bees than I actually need, in order to compensate for this. Alternatively I’ll take the hive far enough away so as to avoid this from happening.
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