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Offline pistolpete

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what went wrong?
« on: May 04, 2015, 12:28:41 am »
I had push in cages on two of my frames with multiple queen cells.   Yesterday I herded those newly emerged queens into regular queen cages.   I pulled the one year old queen out of my largest hive and made up a Nuc for sale.   Then I misted the bees with a bit of vanilla scented syrup and put the two caged queens in the hive.   One went in to the second brood box, and the other in the honey super above a queen excluder.  Today I went back in to make up a mating nuc for one of the queens.   Sadly the queen in the top box was curled up and dead.  I thought: they balled her because I did not wait 24 hours to introduce and the other will be dead too.   But no, when I dug down to the other queen she was feisty in her cage.

So my thought: the bees clustered for the night and the queen in the super was left out and froze.   Any other possibilities?
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Offline Perry

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Re: what went wrong?
« Reply #1 on: May 04, 2015, 07:02:59 am »
If it got cold enough I suppose it is possible.
Also possible they wanted the one below the excluder and not the one above. Was the one above also in a cage? (I'm a bit confused) :-[
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Offline pistolpete

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Re: what went wrong?
« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2015, 10:50:52 am »
these were  both virgin queens and both in cages.   I just wanted to bank the one in the top box for a day, till I had time to house her.
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Offline Perry

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Re: what went wrong?
« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2015, 03:13:13 pm »
I have found introducing virgins can be tricky. They haven't really developed enough to emit strong pheromone and may be viewed as an intruder if coming from another hive.
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Offline robo

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Re: what went wrong?
« Reply #4 on: May 04, 2015, 08:29:12 pm »
Did you give her honey?   Virgins need food when they hatch.
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Offline capt44

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Re: what went wrong?
« Reply #5 on: May 10, 2015, 12:12:36 pm »
When a queen emerges from a cell there is nothing left in the cell to maintain life for the queen.
She must be fed within a hours or she will die.
When I see a queen emerge from a cell in the incubator I immediately put a touch of royal jelly and a drop of water in the cage lid.
I then remove the cage and tear the queen cell off the cell holder and push a piece of queen candy into the cell cup.
When I put the cage back on the cell holder the queen usually goes back up to where the queen cell was and will start feeding on t he candy.
I have fed virgin queens 2 weeks doing this.
I feed them twice a day.
No tender bees, they feed themselves.
The temperature and humidity has to be correct also  93 degrees F and 72%humidity continuous
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Offline brooksbeefarm

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Re: what went wrong?
« Reply #6 on: May 10, 2015, 12:38:57 pm »
It hurts me to agree with my buddy perry >:( But i have seen virgin queens being chased out of hives that i just put swarms in and on frames that had newly hatched queens. It's funny to watch the workers chase  and treat them like there an intruder. :D Jack
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