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Author Topic: OTS failed: 2 queens in hive  (Read 5422 times)

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Offline pistolpete

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OTS failed: 2 queens in hive
« on: May 04, 2014, 04:34:10 pm »
I went to check the hive I de-queened 4 days ago for Q cell acceptance.   To my surprise there were no queen cells at all.  Not only that, there were plenty of eggs in the hive.  My first though was that the old queen must have found her way back from the Nuc next door.  But no, she's still in the Nuc.  So the parent hive had two queens since last fall.  No wonder the hive is overflowing with bees and brood.  Hopefully this will put the breaks on swarming and I will try to find the second queen in a few days and try the OTS again.
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Offline LazyBkpr

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Re: OTS failed: 2 queens in hive
« Reply #1 on: May 05, 2014, 07:45:56 am »
Yikes. Glad you didnt try to introduce a purchased queen to that hive. Good news is, no break in production. That hive should be ready to split again post haste!
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Offline pistolpete

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Re: OTS failed: 2 queens in hive
« Reply #2 on: May 05, 2014, 11:02:05 am »
They definitely threw me a curve ball.  I've heard of mother/daughter queens co-existing briefly, but the last time they would have had a chance to raise a queen was last October. 
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Offline pistolpete

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Re: OTS failed: 2 queens in hive
« Reply #3 on: May 06, 2014, 11:04:01 pm »
Well, I was wrong about the 2 queen thing.  I removed the queen on thursday evening.  I went to check for Q cell acceptance on sunday evening.   That's a  period of 72 hours, so the eggs I was seeing  must still have bee unhatched eggs from Thursday.   When I checked the hive today (6 days after removing the queen) I could not find the queen.   I find it strange that they did not make a single queen cell.

I took a frame from the Nuc, notched a few likely candidates and put it in the parent hive.  Hopefully they feel like re-queening this time.
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