Package Hive help needed

[Papakeith]

I have friend who has taken the plunge and become a new beekeeper.  They started off with two packages.  One at their house and one at a local farm.  The one at the local farm is the one having trouble.

Here is the story as I got it.
The package was hived on May 10th.  Single deep ritecell foundation with a hivetop feeder.
They checked for the queen being release the following Saturday and found that she had been released and was laying a solid pattern.
so far, so good.

On the following week they dropped a frame during inspection. 
The following Saturday, May 31 I got a call that went something like this.
"We did our inspection and found a queen cell".
"What did you do with it?"
"I scraped it off"
"Where was it"
"In the top third of the frame"
"Oh, you probably didn't want to do that"
It was around then that I heard of the frame dropping

We decided that I should swing by tonight to see if there was in fact still a queen or if they really messed up getting rid of the queen cell. 

Well, I couldn't find any signs of the queen.  But I did find about 8 queen cells.
The queen cells were all capped.  So I gave them a choice to make
1. do nothing, let the queens emerge wait a month and see what happens
2. get rid of all of the queen cells and get a mated queen and be back up and running in a week.
3. Or a combination of the two.  Create a nuc from a frame with a bunch of the queen cells and a frame of capped brood. I donated a frame of honey, and then two frames of foundation.  Then they would need to get a mated queen for the hive.  This would get them up and running and give them a plan B if the new queen fails.

Did I point them in the right direction? 
Anything you would do different?

[blueblood]

I think you covered it well.

[Bsweet]

I think you did well with the advise. Jim

[Papakeith]

 
A bit of an update:
He decided on a course of action he chose option three.

• We made a nuc out of one frame of capped brood and a frame with multiple queen cells on it.  I added a frame of honey and two empty frames.
• We left a number of queen cells in the hive along with the remainder of the brood (~2 frames worth). My friend is supposed to pick a local queen this afternoon and hive it.
• When he goes to put the new queen in the hive I asked him to check the queen cells to make sure that none of the remaining ones have emerged.
  If they have emerged , unless he can verify that he has gotten all of the virgin queens out of the hive, there is no sense in placing the new queen in there just to get killed.
  If they haven't emerged I've asked him to cut the cells off the frames and place them in another nuc with a few bees and bring them to me so I can play.  If that isn't doable for him I told him to just kill the queen cells that are there. 

Hopefully he will gather me a few queens.  If not, then he still has a backup plan in the nuc with the other queen cells in it.
fingers crossed.   I'm stuck at work until God knows when so I can't help him.

[Papakeith]

The story continues.

Not entirely unexpected result.

It looks like a queen has emerged from one of the cells in the nuc.  Once I saw that I just left it alone.  I really wanted to dig in and find her but our main goal was the colony that my friend had requeened last Thursday.

We opened it up and started pulling frames.  1, 2 ... the third and fourth held the queen cage.  it was empty.  OK, she's been released.  but no signs of eggs yet.  Not terribly worried just yet.  At best she had only been out a day or so so was hoping to see eggs in the middle frames.  4 nothing, 5 nothin.... waaaaiiit a minute who's that?!
It was a queen running along the bottom of the frame.  I told my helper to keep an eye on her as I ran to get my queen clip.  thankfully she was able to keep her eyes on her.  Definitely a queen, but no markings.  The queen he had put in was marked.  This girl was a locally born queen.
I guess he didn't get rid of the cells quickly enough. 
We couldn't find any sign of the new, marked queen.
We also couldn't see any signs of eggs. In the end I just release that virgin back into her hive.  It is hers now.  I guess we won't be gaining the two weeks of brood that we were hoping for.

Now we wait

[apisbees]

To bad and so sad to by a queen and have her lost due to virgin in the hive.

[Papakeith]

agreed, but glad that the colony is queenright again.  They took it well.  Chalked it up to a learning experience.