Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: rubeehaven2 on June 30, 2013, 12:59:56 pm
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Most of my frames look like this. I assume the hive is in need of a queen. I wish I did a more thorough inspection weeks ago!
Any thoughts?
Thanks, rich
(http://s21.postimg.org/8zyodwocj/002.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/8zyodwocj/)
(http://s21.postimg.org/gl1p9djcz/003.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/gl1p9djcz/)
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that's a clasic laying workers pattern. scattered drone brood. it's to late to just requeen. you have a number of options and most have been discussed at length. what you choose to do will mainly depend on your area and your other bee resources.
see what you can find with a search and if that's not enough, ask away.
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I had the same problem. I ordered a queen. The night before she arrived I took the entire hive more than 75 feet away and one by one dumped all the bees out on the ground off of each frame. I also did that with the box and bottom board. I then reassembled the hive at its original location. This *should* get rid of your laying worker. The hive will now believe that they are queenless and will be more likely to accept the new queen. Put the queen cage in the hive for 2-3 days and then release her (assuming the bees aren't being aggressive towards her in the cage).
I did this 1.5 weeks ago. I checked 1 day after I released the queen to be sure they weren't trying to ball her. I found her walking on one of the frames. I closed it back up and will be checking in the next few days to see if I can see eggs now.
It would be helpful if you have another strong hive to take a frame with capped brood from it to put in this hive to help speed the recovery.
Again....this *should* fix your issue but there is always the chance it won't.
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Looks like laying workers.
http://bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm (http://bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm)
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shaking out a laying worker hive and letting them return to the same hive will not fix things. the laying workers just return to the hive with the others.
MB gave you the link to his stuff on laying workers and it will give you several options.
Megadeth...you got lucky, but there's nothing wrong with that! :-D
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Combs need renewing too
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I re-queened today, a cordovan queen. I used a queen introduction frame for her and added some brood frames from my other hive. (The frames were far from full of brood!)
BUT, now my other hive, though it has good population and loads of honey, appears to have a problem as well. On most frames, the brood cells were very sporadic, I could only locate a very, very small amount of larvae, and even though I was not wearing my glasses, I could have sworn there were some cells with 2 or 3 eggs in them. I should mention, there are two deeps and two medium supers on the hive. The bottom deep has the sporadic brood on the frames, the second is full of honey. The next, (super) is full of honey, and the top super has no comb even started.
Lordy, Lordy! Do I need a second queen?
My main concern is if there is a queen in the hive, (just doing a very poor job), will the hive accept a new queen over her? Will they kick her out if she isn't laying well? This is only a 2nd year hive, so I would think the original queen would still be productive. That is, if she is even alive.
Unsure what to do!
Thanks, Rich
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>Lordy, Lordy! Do I need a second queen?
If you try to introduce a queen to a laying worker hive they almost always kill her.
http://bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm (http://bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm)