Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: rgennaro on August 01, 2019, 10:50:50 pm
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The long story of my swarm continues. Today I went back to see if the new marked queen I released yesterday was indeed missing. Looked everywhere and could not find her ... I assume they killed her (being marked i should have seen her). However during he inspection I am pretty sure I heard a queen piping. It was the three Morse code like beeps, and eerily all the bees stopped buzzing for a second.
Is there a virgin queen in there? Are those the only ones who pipe? Or does a queen pipe now and then?
This is quickly escalating beyond my pay grade ...
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Newbie myself but I?d think she would only do it if there is another queen in there. Your marked queen may be a runner and/or shy.
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What you described sounds like queen piping. Usually it means there is more than one queen in the hive.
Check to see if you any queen cells
Jim Altmiller
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Rgennaro, sounds like a situation where the hive is still producing swarm queen(s). Piping is a queens battle cry. There may be one, or many. Your most thorough course of finding all of them will be to shake all of the bees off off every frame and every hive part - through a queen excluder. Pick out and cage the queen(s) as you see them scrambling on the excluder.
How big is this hive? How many boxes?
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This is the swarm I hived in June. It?s very small, bees cover at most 2 to 3 frames. They are struggling, the brood is few and all over the place which is why I am trying to requeen it. I have been taking out all the queen cups and cells I see. Only one had a larva in it. I don?t think I missed any given how small this hive is.
The queen excluder shake is a possibility .... this hive is ending up being my guinea pig, I feel for them