Well, the Mother Hive Hasn't a Queen

[litefoot]

Three swarms this Spring. Captured all three. The captured swarms are all doing well. Two of the mother hives are queenright. The oldest mother hive (the first to swarm), after 5 weeks, is without brood or any sign of a queen. It's full of field bees. At this point, will they accept a frame of brood/eggs if I also transfer the nurse bees with it?

[Jen]

Sure!   

And by the way do you know how to do 'notching'? Notching is something I'm learning as well. It's just a thought, the bees will make a queen anyway, but this is interesting stuff on helping the bees make a queen cell.

Good vid as well, informative

http://outyard.weebly.com/queens.html

[LazyBkpr]

Are the workers laying yet?  If they are not...   I suggest getting that frame of eggs and brood in there.  Be even better if you put the brood frame in and gave them a mated queen a few days later, or combined one of the nuc's?

[Woody Roberts]

What Scott said.
They probably will build their own queen. However the population will fall to near zero by the time her brood hatches.

I would either combine and split later or plan on giving them frames of capped brood to keep the population up.

Most of the bees will be past good queen rearing age. In these situations I always combine them with my weakest hive and do a split from my strongest hive in their equipment.

[Jen]

I can attest to the mated queen, sure made a difference in A LOT of ways.

[litefoot]

One of the "problems" with combining is that this colony is already two-deep full of bees. But I like the idea of adding capped brood along the way.

[LazyBkpr]

     Isnt that one of the purposes of keeping a nuc? A spare queen in the event a production hive loses their queen.
   Give them brood to raise a queen and they will.  If your in a good flow they may put up excess honey. If your not in a good flow you just lose a month.  Decisions, decisions..

[litefoot]

     Isnt that one of the purposes of keeping a nuc? A spare queen in the event a production hive loses their queen.
   Give them brood to raise a queen and they will.  If your in a good flow they may put up excess honey. If your not in a good flow you just lose a month.  Decisions, decisions..

A spare nuc is a GREAT idea. Lord knows I would have had plenty of opportunities to use the queen cells from my swarms. My intention this year was to move toward independence by raising queens and never buying queens or packages again. I built a mating nuc during the winter and I already had a couple of 5-frame cell starters. Unfortunately, my job took me away from home for most of the Spring and I was relegated to absent beekeeper status. But on the bright side I got home in time to capture the swarms.  I've been blessed...and a bit lucky...so far this year despite being a deadbeat.

[apisbees]

Beekeeping reminds me of Kenny Rogers song The Gambler. "You got to know when to hold them ,know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run." Anything is possible but the most prudent thing to do is put the bees where they will give you the greatest results. Like Woody said put the bees with the weakest, or put a weak nuc in the queen less hive let the bees return to her and add some frames of brood to the weak hive you removed the queen and brood from and do a cut down and let the hive with younger bees raise a new queen.

[Jen]

Apis- ""You got to know when to hold them ,know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run."

   I'm not sure when I'm going to get this far.... thanks for the giggle

[Barbarian]

Litefoot ..... you're apparently queenless hive occurs fairly often.

I like to check how the bees are behaving. There are signs that indicate a queen is present but not laying yet. Clean polished brood cells indicate a queen as does purposeful behaviour on the face of the comb. Pollen coming in is a good sign.

If the colony is full of bees then there is no need for the queen to start laying. Adding a frame of eggs could delay delay further the queen laying. One dodge I use is to weaken the hive. I move the brood box to a new stand several feet away. A weaker hive can go on the original stand (and be combined with the original supers of bees).