Need some advice

[jwalter04]

I'm on my 3rd year with a single hive. Did my first inspection of the year about a month ago. Couldn't find any sign of a queen, eggs, or brood. Waited 2 weeks and again no signs whatsoever, just workers drawing out comb and making honey. So I ordered a queen, installed her, and now a week later, I find my new queen and her attendants dead in the travel container. The candy had been eaten through. Most surprisingly, I find a small section of brood with larva. (See photos). For the life of me I could not find another queen and this is the only section of brood in the hive. Suggestions?  Thoughts?  What is going on here?


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[Green bee]

Looks like the queen was still there to me. If it was a laying worker I think all the brood would be drone. I would find her and re queen. Just my opinion for what it's worth.

[Lburou]

Looks like the queen was still there to me. If it was a laying worker I think all the brood would be drone. I would find her and re queen. Just my opinion for what it's worth.

Its hard to disagree with Green Bee.  I would feed them and check in a few days for eggs. 

[Perry]

Agreed, she was in there somewhere. I would wait and give her a chance with some clean comb before I decided to replace her though.

[Green bee]

Agreed, she was in there somewhere. I would wait and give her a chance with some clean comb before I decided to replace her though.

yes I agree with Perry, sounds like good advice. This is where experience pays off. If you do as Perry suggested I don't think you can go wrong. Besides nobody wants to squish there queen on purpose. Not me anyways.

[riverbee]

"I'm on my 3rd year with a single hive. Did my first inspection of the year about a month ago. Couldn't find any sign of a queen, eggs, or brood. Waited 2 weeks and again no signs whatsoever, just workers drawing out comb and making honey. So I ordered a queen, installed her, and now a week later, I find my new queen and her attendants dead in the travel container. The candy had been eaten through. Most surprisingly, I find a small section of brood with larva. (See photos). For the life of me I could not find another queen and this is the only section of brood in the hive. Suggestions?  Thoughts?  What is going on here?"

your original queen was present...as others have noted.  your original queen is a very poor queen, evident from the pix.  i would go through hive, find her and send her off to the promised land and requeen again. 

question, in 3 years have you ever replaced this queen?

comment; from your photos...... this queen is failing, or has failed and i would be concerned about laying workers if you haven't seen any brood for a month until the new queen along with attendants were introduced and were offed. find her squish her, requeen.

EDIT AND ADD:
you have sort of a 'shot brood' pattern going on

btw, welcome to the forum!

[neillsayers]

BTW, welcome!

[jwalter04]

Thanks for the advice. To answer the question, I have not intentionally requeened, however the queen that is in there is not the original. She was marked and I found her dead after the first winter. They have "made" a new queen themselves, possibly more than once. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the plan now is to sit tight and wait 2-3 weeks then reevaluate the situation.  Thanks again.


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[Perry]

I can understand those that suggest requeening right away. I on the other hand, think the queens can take a lot of the blame when frames are spotty, and prefer to give them a chance with a nice clean frame of comb to see if the problem persists or if there is another reason for the poor pattern.
Just the way I do it, can completely understand why others might not.

[Lburou]

...the plan now is to sit tight and wait 2-3 weeks then reevaluate the situation.  Thanks again.

That plan seems reasonable to me.  If you feed them a little, it could help.  If you do finally pinch that queen, do it after the new queen arrives.  If you can keep the old queen alive until the new one is accepted and laying eggs it would be even better, but a lot of bother.   

I meant to say

[efmesch]

Welcome to the forum JW.  From your avatar I can see you are serious about beekeeping (   ).  But one vital statistic is missing---your location.  It would tell us a lot about what stage of activity your queen should be.  If you''re up north and the season is just starting to wake up, a laying pattern like your pictures show might be acceptable.  But if you're down south and it has been flowering for a while, a pattern like that is inexcusable.  The queen should be in "full production" by now. 

My gut feeling sides with Riverbee.  I think the queen is low quality (for whatever the reason) and should be replaced as soon as posssible.  But she must not be present when you attempt to introduce her replacement.  You could keep her around until her replacement arrives, then pinch her and after 24 hours or so introduce the new queen in her cage.
One more comment: It is usually to the beekeeper's advantage to maintain a minimum of two hives.  That way, one can help out when the other encounters problems.  Imagine how nice it would be if you could harvest a queen cell from one hive to place in the other when you eliminate the poor queen.  It could save you a lot of time and money, just as a starter.

[jwalter04]

Not sure how to make my profile show my location. When I click on yours it doesn't show either. I am using the Tapatalk app so maybe that is the problem. I'm in Southington, CT. I hear you on the multiple hives and good point. I'm just about as green to this hobby as you can get and by some miracle of nature I've kept this hive "alive" for three years.


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[efmesch]

I'm surprised you can't find my location---after reading your comment, I looked at my profile and found my house marked on the map that comes with my location"Israel".  I think that Riverbee, who undertands a lot more than I do about the technical workings of the forum, could tell you how to add your location.
I don't know what to say abaout what to expect in your location----on the one hand, you are what I would call "north", but on the other hand, you're not too far from the sea and probably that has some influence on the stability of temperatures and the early advance of the season.   Do you know any nearby beekeepers who could give a look at your hive?  Sometimes, there's no better advice than you can get from an experiencedd local beek.

[riverbee]

"I have not intentionally requeened, however the queen that is in there is not the original. She was marked and I found her dead after the first winter. They have "made" a new queen themselves, possibly more than once. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the plan now is to sit tight and wait 2-3 weeks then reevaluate the situation.  Thanks again."

my humble opinion after reading the history of the hive, even more reason to requeen.

i am not one to requeen. i try to let the bees requeen themselves or i use swarm cells in the spring. i keep around 6 hives now and my bees are kept in a rural area with few left who keep bees in my surrounding area.

your 3rd year, a single hive. the first queen you found dead after the first winter.........how did they requeen themselves?
how have they been able to requeen themselves? has this hive ever swarmed?
with one hive i would be concerned about the drone population/genetics/diversity and if queens were emergency queens or from supersedure cells and at what time of year? during a dearth of pollen/nectar?  there are dynamics to how a queen is chosen to be a queen, correct age, and how well she has been fed, and can adequately mate with multiple drones.

questions to ponder.........

efmesch has kept bees many more moons than i have. there is one thing i know about ef.........if he expresses a humble opinion on what's going on in a hive, i would take his advice and follow his direction or consider what he said.

i realize you might be scratching your head...... a majority says leave her alone, give her time, feed. a minority says requeen..........
each of us have different thoughts, ways of keeping bees, there is no right or wrong. take what is said, make a decision, try it out, it's how we all learn.

ps about your location, i can fill this in for you if you would like. i do not use tapatalk, so i am unsure of how tapatalk works. be happy to help you out, just send me a pm!

[jwalter04]

UPDATE!!!
It's been a little over two weeks since the last inspection (see issues above). This time I was able to identify the queen and using my fancy new queen catcher/marker put a big white dot to make this easier in the future. Unfortunately she still seems to be a poor layer as there was very few brood again (see pictures). I did find several of what I think are queen cells. These were randomly placed as one was torn open removing a frame. (See pic).

Could it be that the workers are aware of the queens defectiveness and are trying to replace her? There didn't seem to be many workers around the brood however several of the frames from the top deep were loaded with workers. It also seemed the overall population had increased.

Looks like requeening is the route to go after all. Thoughts?


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[LazyBkpr]

Looks like a very nicely marked Drone to me?   

   I think I would definitely make some changes. I don't see enough bees in there to even try to requeen that hive. How many bees are there?

   I read that you have only the one hive, so you do not have any resources to add?
   If that is the case a nuc from someone nearby would be a good route. Take the frames about ten to twenty steps away from the hive and shake them off, put the nuc into the hive and let them get established. change orientation of the hive. The foragers that find their way back will join the bees from the nuc and strengthen it.

[jwalter04]

Looks like a very nicely marked Drone to me?   

   I think I would definitely make some changes. I don't see enough bees in there to even try to requeen that hive. How many bees are there?

   I read that you have only the one hive, so you do not have any resources to add?
   If that is the case a nuc from someone nearby would be a good route. Take the frames about ten to twenty steps away from the hive and shake them off, put the nuc into the hive and let them get established. change orientation of the hive. The foragers that find their way back will join the bees from the nuc and strengthen it.

The top deep was loaded with workers maybe half the frames covered. I worried that might have been a drone, but it was in the middle of the brood area and the only bee that was different. I could have made that mistake though.


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[efmesch]

IMHO LazyBkpr is right about that marked "queen" being a drone.  I would add that the cells you seem to think were queen cells look more like wishful thinking on your part. They are  not shaped correctly to contain a queen and they seem to be empty. 
Lazy gave a good suggestion.   Another option might be to set up a bait hive to try and get a swarm----I'm assuming that in CT it should be swarming season around now.  If you get a swarm, you could unite it with your present hive and start off with a strong hive in posession of honey.
You could also put out feelers to any beekeepers in your area asking for any excess queen cells they might have as swarming season takes off.
I would repeat, having contact with one (or more) local keeps would be very advantageous to you, especially at this stage of your expertise.

[jwalter04]

Yes, that was a drone, chalk that one up to inexperience. If nothing else I am persistent (see stubborn) so I went back out and opened up the hive again. This time I think I was successful. You see, I though that the queen and the brood could only be in the bottom of the hive so I didn't bother to look closely at the frames in the upper of the two deeps. I'm learning. Turn out I didn't know what brood looked like either, thought it was more capped honey. There are at least 3 frames 80% covered in capped brood. See the pictures.



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[efmesch]

I couldn''t help but smile.      Some poeple like to learn the hard way---but learn they do!!
That queen looks nice.  Did you mark her or is she the one you thought was replaced?  Despite her good looks, there are a lot of empty cells scattered among the brood---at this time of the year it shouldn't be like that.  A good queen will lay a solid frame of brood. 

If you are interested in experimenting, I would suggest a nice way for you to raise a new queen while your old one is still working---Take the brood box WITH THE QUEEN and position it on the floor.  Above the brood box, with the queen, place an excluder and above that place your third box with plenty of honey and pollen on both sides of one frame with eggs. 
The distance from the queen is often (but not guaranteed) enough to inspire the bees above to start raising new queens in the top box.  You can check after 3-4 days and see if they are raising any queens.  They might have used young larvae (and not the most desireable just-hatched eggs) so beware of the   possibility of queen emergence earlier than the books say (unless you remove any sealed cells and only leave open queen cells to finish full term queens).
I know my instructions are a bit sketchy, but you'll want to learn by yourself and enjoy the process.  :\'(