I was having issues getting my bees to move up into the flow frames after 2 years despite lightly painting them with melted wax. I have a full 8 frame brood box and an added ideal box as they needed some extra space. That ideal was full of capped honey and some brood. After some advice I moved the ideal box to above the flow super and after inspecting today the girls they have started putting honey in the flow frames with a lot of bees working the frames. I did find some queen cells today on the ideal frames that are now at the top of the hive (they werent there 2 weeks ago). One has either been chewed or hatched but I forgot to write the date and details down. I now realise that there must be an unmated queen in the top ideal and obviously I dont want drone brood in the flow frames. Aside from finding that queen and removing asap is there anything else I can do? I havent mastered queen spotting! Not sure what to do. Can I just put the ideal back down under the QX with unmated queen and they will kill her off as they already have a queen? I have someone I can ask at bee club this week but looking for some advice here too.
Hi & welcome to the forum. Obviously the bees in the ideal made emergency queens after the queen pheromones faded.
What you could do if you can’t find the virgin queen is remove the ideal & honey super & replace them with an empty super above the QE. Then inspect every frame carefully, looking for the queen, before shaking the bees into the empty box. The strategy being that the workers will pass through the QE, leaving the queen behind. A virgin queen wont fit through the QE.
Thankyou Jeff. What a great idea. How long do you think it would take for the workers to all move back down into the brood box? A few hours? Just trying to plan the day.