Posted by Surreybeekeeper | Posted in Beekeeping, Bees, Queen | Posted on 25-06-2011
Tags: a hive with no queen, brood cells, lots of brood cells, My hive has no queen, ordering a queen for my hive, queenless hives
[google1] I am not particularly happy with myself today and feel that a mixture of a complete lack of time over the last few weeks (combined with rather 
sporadic outburst of almost torrential rain when I did get an hour or two free) and a slight relapse of my “Ostrich Syndrome” of burying my head in the sand hoping that it will all get better if I just left it alone – I wished I had gone with my gut instinct and bought a couple of queens online or at least put the feelers out locally just in case.
Due to this combination of factors I now find myself with two hives with no queens, no eggs and no larvae. Not a particularly great position to be in. The strange thing is that neither hive is particularly feisty which is strange when you consider there is no “controller” now. I am slightly miffed.
I first felt there was a problem on the last of my filming sessions with Charlie Dimmock. We had the Chairman of my beekeeping association over to offer advice on disease managment – we were looking through the hives and neither could be sure of any eggs in situ – both hives were healthy though and so there wasn’t much concern.
However, I knew that only 4 days before I had marked a queen in one of the hives and the other had swarmed and a virgin queen had hatched. I was not convinced all was well – I could have damaged the queen while marking her and a bird may have made off with the queen on her mating flight (or any other reason for losing a queen)
Since then the weather has been awful and good days have only falled when I have been stuck in a rather large red brick building working rather hard.
I was able to make one hive inspection and again I left unconvinced of what was going on (I think this is where the ostrich syndrome kicked in) so I thought I would again leave it to see what happened. What I do remember is that there was a lot of brood cells apparent in the National Hive and I had a feeling this was not a good sign – Here is a link to a great article about having too many brood cells in the hive
Again the weather didn’t help and that is where I find myself now. It is strange as one of the hives is still massive – 15 frames of a 14*12 hive absolutely filled to the rims with bees. The other, the National, is not so strong and that needs some work done asap.
Therefore I may be ordering a new queen through the post pretty soon. Any offers welcome. If they could arrive yesterday it would be much appreciated.
Hang in James, it can take literally weeks for queens to come into lay. It’s a classic mistake to buy a queen on the basis the colony is ‘hopelessly queenless’, whereas more often the new queen has yet to come into lay. Normally what happens, is you put the bought queen in, and a few hours later you find it dead on the landing board. If it makes you feel better whilst you wait you could burn a couple of twenty pound notes which is about the price of a queen.
I’ve just had queens take at least 4 weeks to come into lay. After this unusual weather I’d give them the benefit of the doubt.
Adam
Hey Adam,
That might explain why the strong hive is relatively calm then. I did Mark the queen though so surprised I haven’t seen her.
Convinced the other has no queen though as not a lot of bees there (though there a few larvae which is a bit strange but no eggs)
Very strange
James
Hi Adam,
Sometimes it helps to place a frame of eggs in to encourage the new queen to lay. Don’t give up, twice I have waited for more than 3 weeks for a virgin queen to start laying. How long time is it since the virgin queen hatched?
The good temper of the bees should also be a good indicaiton of that all is in order.
A new frame of eggs can also be used for the bees to draw an emergency cell and you will have a new queen in a little while if there is not new queen there already. If you hav no frames of eggs, then I’m sure someone in your local beekeeping society could assist you with that.
Don’t go and buy a queen, try to resolve it other ways first.
Good luck.
Sissel
Thanks Sissel,
No eggs at all so might have to bribe someone then!
James
I agree with Adam, my new queen took a few weeks to start laying. And it’s so easy to miss a queen, even my local bee inspector couldn’t find my queen in March when she inspected. Here’s what Ted Hooper (author of Guide to Bees & Honey, 2010) says about queenlessness:
“Recognition of queenlessness is far from easy if one is just relying on conclusions drawn during examination of the colony. The main signs are that the colony is more irritable than usual, the bees seem to be less well organized on the combs, very few brood cells will be polished up ready for the queen to lay in – certainly not a large circular area of such cells. Pollen in the broodnest will be shiny from being covered with honey to prevent it going mouldy. Often there will be some cells with little hoods drawn out from the top walls and often these are covering pollen, and in some cases, an egg from a laying worker. All these signs are straws in the wind pointing towards queenlessness but none is conclusive.”
I’ll offer the other side of the coin regarding Adam’s advice. Continuing to wait to see what happens can have negative results as well. In my case, I kept missing one of my queens, but felt she was there amidst a jam packed and well populated hive. I kept watching for eggs and saw none, no larvae or capped brood either. Then one day I found a lot of eggs, 3 to 4 per cell. Because I had no queen and nothing to provide them to make one, the colony developed a laying worker. An old time beekeeper told me to take the entire hive as far away as I could get it from its usual location, shake every single frame of every single bees, then return the hive to its original location. Since chances are the laying worker had never left the hive, she would not be able to find her way home. After all of that, I bought a new queen (in her small wooden cage) and let the bees take their time in introducing her which was about five days. The colony accepted her and she’s still reigning over that colony. So while you can wait, if you wait too long, you’re going to end up with more issues. I was lucky that the colony accepted the new queen, but a slow release is the only way to do it. If you open a queen cage and just let her out, they will kill her without a doubt. Good luck!
Thanks Mark, you seem to share my concerns……
I’m with the ‘Leave it another week’ club, especially if the bees are calm and placid. I’ve lost about half of my queens this year – mostly (I think) due to stress caused by the on-going Canterbury Earthquakes. On most occasions, the remaining bees were pretty calm and relaxed, even when the brood cells were completely empty. Adam and Emily are both right: it can take as long as a month for an emergency queen to emerge, mate and start laying. On top of that, it’s often very hard to find a virgin queen. Another week won’t harm the hive, but should give a new queen time to start laying.
When I lost queens, I only added frames of eggs and brood if the remaining bees were feisty. Unsettled bees in a hive that is normally placid is a good sign that the hive is queenless and doesn’t have the eggs needed to raise an emergency queen.
While buying a replacement queen might be your only choice at this stage, have you tried raising your own queens? It’s not as difficult as you might expect and certainly causes less panic when you do find that a queen has disappeared……
Hey Chris,
I should probably go with the majority here then.
Nope haven’t raised my own queens but have watched Adam do it and am keen to try it next year. Looks like you need patience and a delicate touch……..I am not particularly good at either of those!
J
What Mark says can happen, but I reckon it’s about a ratio is about 500 to 1 for just waiting longer to having a laying worker develop. On that basis Mark was pretty unlucky. I can’t think of another beekeeper in about 5+ years that that has happened to during the summer. A real piece of bad luck.
The best thing you could do is A) add a test frame of eggs or B) feed which can act as a stimulant. The flow seems to have started so that may suffice. It’s a reason to have three hives really.
Adam
I agree with Adam here. If you can get your hands on a frame of new eggs, add it to the hive. The good thing, the workers can start to develop their own queen as long as they have eggs, and the pheremones from the eggs and brood will keep a laying worker from developing. If you don’t have any, you might be able to get a frame or two from an area beekeeper who might trade frames with you or sell you one. Just make sure the frames are “clean” (disease free) and from a beekeeper who takes care of his or her bees.
The biggest hassle with my laying worker hive was loading up and lugging that hive. What a chore! The bees were very unhappy with all that disruption. And when I returned to the hive stand with the “shaken” hive, I had a ball the size of a basketball hanging off the hive stand. You should have seen them marching in once I got the hive back in place.
Make sure you keep us posted, James. I’m anxious to know how it works out and what conclusions you draw.
Mark
I myself have waited 4 weeks before a queen began laying. The one hive that I waited 5 weeks on developed laying workers. I saved the hive and stopped the laying workers by stealing 2 or 3 frames of open brood from every hive I had(enough for 8 frames). I ordered a queen for them, it was time to diversify my genetics anyway. It took 7 days before the bees stopped balling the cage. I removed the cork, they accepted her and as soon as she started laying, they superseded her, and she had a good pattern. The one they replaced her with never bred well, it was too late in the year for many drones here in south carolina. The hive dwindled steadily, untill it stabilized at about 2 ponds of bees. The queen was laying, not much, and the bees weren’t foraging much either. I took a full super of honey and gave it to this weak hive to try to make it through the summer (it is brutal hot in South Carolina and not much bloom for the bees to work). The hive never took off, never the built numbers needed to get in on the fall flow, and ended up starving in feb, right before our main honeyflow starts. I figure my original hatching gal got nabbed by a bird. Now, when I check my hives and see queencells and want to re queen, I leave 2 large queen cells, and one they are just starting. Seems to work well. I didn’t try the shaking thing, I may next time I have the problem. I use no chemicals or treatments on any of my bees, relying on manipulation and interruption of the brood cycle yearly to disrupt the breeding cycle of the varroa. Works very well, and I make more hives as people all around me lose them.
Wow Jeremy, you have been through a lot then! I shall try to learn from what you have said then! Thank you.
Wow Jeremy, you have been through a lot then! I shall try to learn from what you have said then! Thank you.
One of my hives developed a laying worker last year. In hindsight, it was easy to spot as there were cells with multiple eggs or with eggs only half-way down the cell. Only trouble was, there seemed to be a lot of normal looking cells/eggs too, so I didn’t recognise the clues until it became obvious the hive was filling with drone brood. I must have pulled that hive apart three or four times looking for the queen. Doh!
I split the two brood boxes with a hive mat, created an entrance on the back of the top box and left them for a week. When I checked again, there were only eggs in the bottom box, so I figured I knew where the laying worker was. At that point, I took the top box away and introduced two frames of eggs/brood from another hive. Those bees drew out an emergency queen who has done really well.
I had a queen in a nuc from one of my first grafting attempts and decided to take radical action with box with the laying worker. I put the new queen and the frames from the nuc into a brand new box and bottom board. I put that in place of the laying worker box and laid a sheet of corflute up to the entrance. I dumped the entire laying worker box on the floor outside the new hive and gave them a huge puffing of really fragrant pine needle smoke. I put five frames from that box into the new hive and stood back. I wish I’d filmed it because the bees took about 30 seconds to march into the hive.
I was a bit worried about fighting, but figured that the new bees thought they were home because they were with their queen and the old bees thought they were home because they were in the right place. Seems I was right because when I checked it about ten days later, the box was full of eggs and brood.