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Queen of drones
Charlie Bezzina:
I opened my hives today and found one full of bullet shaped drone cells.
This colony has been on my radar for the last four weeks, because I could see it was in trouble. Initially I thought it was queenless because there were no eggs, then i noticed some eggs and I thought it was a laying worker because there multiple eggs in the cells. Then I found the queen and thought maybe she is just incredibly slow getting started. Now I find her laying nothing but drones.
Sadly I squashed her today, because her entire colony was doomed.
Luckily my other hive had three queen cells, two of them capped and one uncapped but with a big fat larva in it. I put those queen cells in to the now queenless hive.
I really hope I have done the right thing, and that they can sort themselves out.
BeeMaster2:
That should do the trick. Did you leave any queen cells in the donating hive.
That hive either swarmed, most likely or they plan on superseding the old queen.
Jim Altmiller
Charlie Bezzina:
Hi Jim. That might be my big mistake... No I didn't leave any queen cells in the donating colony.
The donating colony is strong and they had fully drawn and 80% filled the deep super with nectar. I added an ideal with basswood sections to try and get the comb drawn down from starter strips, but I could place a second deep on there too.
Do you think I should put one frame back in, or leave them to fix my mistake? I prefer not to disturb the queeless hive for at least a week so the capped cells can open.
The15thMember:
--- Quote from: Charlie Bezzina on November 19, 2022, 04:44:28 pm ---Hi Jim. That might be my big mistake... No I didn't leave any queen cells in the donating colony.
The donating colony is strong and they had fully drawn and 80% filled the deep super with nectar. I added an ideal with basswood sections to try and get the comb drawn down from starter strips, but I could place a second deep on there too.
Do you think I should put one frame back in, or leave them to fix my mistake? I prefer not to disturb the queeless hive for at least a week so the capped cells can open.
--- End quote ---
If the donating colony is strong and has lots of open brood, then I think it should be okay to let them start over making queen cells if they want to. Just keep an eye on them and make sure everything continues to be fine, in case that queen is failing or they are thinking about swarming.
Oldbeavo:
It pays to always find the queen in the donating hive.
If she is there and looks fine then you may consider taking a bit more brood if you think they were considering swarming.
If the queen is a bit off, not as good as you like then leaving some frames of eggs will allow he bees to continue with their supersedure.
If you don't find the queen, then leave some cells to cover the possibility that she has gone, or that you missed her.
I know HP doesn't agree with saving drone hives, but if you shake all the bees off the drone frames and smash all the drone brood, put them back with some brood and eggs, QC if you have one and leave it for time to generate a new queen, hopefully.
We are about to do the same procedure to one of our hives today.
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