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Author Topic: Queenless swarms  (Read 2857 times)

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Offline Marty68

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Queenless swarms
« on: June 05, 2014, 08:12:55 am »
well i'm down to 6 hives now. had to do a combine on 2 swarms. hives had swarmed and took about 75% of the bees. what was left had a good queen cell in them. i looked yesterday and seen that there wasn't much activity going on outside the hive so i looked inside. no queen for about 2 weeks i'm guessing. was told not to bother them after they swarm so the new queen can go do her business and come back. good thing i checked, they had 5 frames of honey they had been working on and a bunch of new comb built. arranged it to have the comb in the middle and put the newspaper in between the 2 deeps. gonna leave them alone for a few days and look to see what is happening. after all that can someone tell me what could have happened to my queens.
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Offline iddee

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Re: Queenless swarms
« Reply #1 on: June 05, 2014, 08:38:33 am »
It often takes 3 weeks after emergence for a queen to begin laying. 2 weeks is just an average. You may have had a viable queen getting ready to start laying.
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Offline LazyBkpr

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Re: Queenless swarms
« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2014, 09:28:34 am »

   If they were virgin queens they still needed to go on mating flights. Everything from dragon flies to birds, and toads to skunks like eating bees. Queens are not as maneuverable and make good targets. There is also a chance the queen went back to the wrong hive.  too many things are possible that could go wrong. Along with what Iddee mentioned. I have seen eggs as soon as ten days, and as long as 19 days.  If I find no eggs after 24 or 25 days I take other steps to prevent laying workers..  My understanding is, it takes about 30 days for laying workers to develop. Re combine or add brood and bees if I need the extra hive.
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Offline Marty68

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Re: Queenless swarms
« Reply #3 on: June 05, 2014, 09:54:08 am »
Since I've combined now and there is 2 queens in it what will happen. Will they swarm again or will they fight. It has been almost 3 weeks almost all brood has hatched. Hope I made the right decision to combine
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Offline iddee

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Re: Queenless swarms
« Reply #4 on: June 05, 2014, 11:04:56 am »
""almost all brood has hatched""

If you have ANY worker brood left, and the queen cell was made there, it has been less than 5 days since the queen emerged. There is no way you would have new eggs.

They will either fight it out or keep two queens for a short time and then dispose of one.
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Offline Marty68

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Re: Queenless swarms
« Reply #5 on: June 06, 2014, 08:20:50 am »
well i looked thouroughly in the hives yesterday and seen that i had aanother queenless hive. so i combined it with another combine that i did. that makes 3 hives in 1. so not happy about that. but on the flip side the other 3 i have are going like crazy. 1 hive has 15 frames of brood 2 of which are mostly drone frames. let's see if i can post the pics here. will have to post later need to move pics to a different file because i just can't find them. i'll check back in a bit.
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Offline blueblood

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Re: Queenless swarms
« Reply #6 on: June 06, 2014, 09:04:54 am »
Quote from: LazyBkpr on June 05, 2014, 09:28:34 am
Everything from dragon flies to birds, and toads to skunks like eating bees. Queens are not as maneuverable and make good targets.

Good point.  I forget about this possibility.
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