What if: Add queen to brood frames rather than reverse?

[Duane]

Now that my bees are gone, I'm wondering what if I did things differently.  I understand that if you add additional brood frames from another hive, they don't fight.  But I had very few bees left, maybe 100.  Does the ratio of new bees to old bees make a difference?  What if I had been able to get a couple of brood frames from someone else and added them to my box?  In fact, with so few of my bees, what if I just moved my queen over to the brood frames?  Do you think they would they fight?  Would they accept my queen?

[rookie2531]

Do you think a queen would lay well knowing there isn't enough to take care of the brood? If you added some brood with workers on it, maybe put her in a caged push in comb type, to give those workers time to accept her.

[greenbtree]

Certainly that could of been done, you would of essentially been starting a nuc.  Take a couple of frames of capped brood, WITH the attending bees, and after 24 hours (so they recognize their queenless state) introduce the queen in a queen or a larger push in cage.  You need the attending bees though, if you put even capped brood into a hive with no bees to cover it, the brood can chill and die.

JC

[Duane]

But yet, with a regular hive, you can add brood frames with its bees and those added bees will accept the queen with no issue, right?  At what point does adding brood frames to a hive become adding a queen to the brood nuc?

That is, 10% to 90% probably works fine.
But 99% to 1% doesn't?
50/50?

[greenbtree]

I don't know if anyone can give you a percentage.  When you pull a frame of brood with attending bees they are mostly nurse bees, and not very aggressive, which may be why there is not a lot of fighting when you add them to a hive.  You probably could get away with just adding a queen to few frames of freshly pulled brood and bees most of the time, but why risk it?  Even when you wait 24 hours, it doesn't always work, so you want to give yourself the best chance as possible.

JC

[Michael Bush]

> Does the ratio of new bees to old bees make a difference?

Yes.

>What if I had been able to get a couple of brood frames from someone else and added them to my box?

That would help.  Ideally one of open brood and eggs (which will occupy them and give a good mix of brood) and one of emerging brood which will boost the population quickly.

>  In fact, with so few of my bees, what if I just moved my queen over to the brood frames?  Do you think they would they fight?

Not sure what you mean.  You mean a split and introduce the queen from the weak hive?

>Would they accept my queen?

It's all in the timing, the strength etc.  If they are queenless overnight bees will generally accept a queen in a cage with a candy release.  I would not just dump a queen in.  A queen that is laying, is on a frame of brood with her entourage can often be introduced by just putting that frame in a queenless hive.  But there are never any guarantees.

[Duane]

I'm still bothered by what I should have done with my past bees.  I'm almost obsessed with the idea of saving the handful of bees that I had.  I'm even thinking about duplicating the situation to see what would work.

But back to introducing extra bees and percentages.  While a specific percentage can't be given, and probably varies from situation to situation, I still would like a general idea.   I didn't think this was like splitting, but maybe it is?  I understand you can add brood frames from one hive to another and there is no problem.  How is this situation different when there are just a small number of bees when you're adding a brood frame to?

What my situation was, was the hive had dwindled to a hand full of bees.  For some reason, I liked the queen.  The bees were less aggressive than the nucs I have now.  Maybe I should have killed her.  But it was my only hive.

But whatever the reason, suppose you are in an outyard, it's getting late, you won't be able to make it back for a week, you had liked all the hives and their queens, you come across a hive that had dwindled to less than a frame of bees.  You have to make a decision quick.  How do you stack your odds for the possibility of it working without spending a lot of time agonizing over it and without giving up on it?  Such as, one frame of brood from another hive or two or more frames? 

[rookie2531]

I don't know that you could save her and start again with her. If the hive dwindled down so small where you have to save her, wouldn't you NOT waste valuable frames of brood on her, just to come back to have the same situation?

If it was a mating nuc queen, sure. But one that had her chance, sorry.
I would throw the comb in a different queen right hive and let a good queen lay it up, if I had hives that were still drawing comb.

Or, put that comb in and take some brood out and switch. Let the girls make a new queen with a e-cell. That way I still get the same number of hives and chances are, better queen. But I would not even try to save a failed or failing queen.

[sc-bee]

So you like her---- why? Did you not say the bees dwindled down? Why did they dwindle down.... the queen maybe. As far as adding a frame of bees to boost an existing hive and the frame of bees excepting the queen. I think the existing hive is accepting the frame of bees. And the queen already belongs to the existing hive. Of course all of this is relative to strength of the existing hive. Just a handful of bees and a poor or no queen.... cut your losses IMHO

[Duane]

Yeah, I know.  And the year before, coming out of winter, it just barely made it.  So, yes, I should have killed her.  I don't know why many of my bees died out that last time.  It could have been a bit of cold weather and the wrong time before they moved up to the 10 frames of honey.  If just a happen chance, wouldn't that be worth trying?  But then again, other bees might not have had the problem, so do I want to promote dumb bees? 

Maybe I've read too much Huber, who did all kind of experiments with bees just because they were there.  And since he couldn't see well, he made his assistant do all the busy work.  But I just want to know.  When adding a frame to an existing hive which is smaller than the frame being added.....?

See, if I can divide my existing boxes and get an extra queen, I'd like to find out by creating a similar situation.  Of course things would be different, if something was wrong with my old queen, but the general logistics of saving minimum bees might be answered.  I don't know why, but wanting to find an answer seems to fascinate me.  Maybe no one else has bothered with such a lost cause.  When there were only a dozen bees left, they seemed a lot more friendly....or is pathetic the word....

[Maggiesdad]

demoralized

[rookie2531]

It is hard to say what would happen. If I understand you correctly, you want to know if you had a queen that only had about 50-100 nurse bees with her, and added a couple of frames that were packed full of bees and brood, would they accept her?

They might not realize that they were queen less yet and ball her right away, if you just put the frames right in there with no time for them to realize there situation. On they other hand, only a few might see her and they few nurse bees with her might be able to keep her protected long enough for her to be accepted.

All you need to do is find a queen, shake all the bees off a frame. Put her on it. Let some bees crawl on it and put it in a nuc. Then maybe later that day or even the next, add a couple frames from a different hive, making sure the there queen wasn't on it and inspect 3 days later. If you see cells, then most likely you wont find her.

Give it a go. Good luck

[Duane]

I just keep thinking about this.

It sounds like it has to do with numbers.  If there's enough bees with the queen to protect her from not a lot more introduced, it'll be ok.  But if there's hardly any, she may not be ok.  But then when you have several original frames of bees and add several others, there's so much happening everything may still be ok.  Then also impacting it is if the introduced bees have been queenless for awhile or not.  So that sounds like why this isn't an exact answer, but it does give me the idea of percentages and what might happen.

So, if I had of had a second box and didn't catch it until a handful of bees, it might be difficult to do it immediately.  But maybe if I had time, I could but some brood frames in a box for a few hours and then introduce them or the queen to each other.  But if I had a mostly covered frame left with the queen, I might get by with adding another frame.  Or maybe putting them on the opposite side of the hive for a day then moving them together.

[KeyLargoBees]

I am learning there is very little that is black and white in beekeeping. You can do EVERYTHING right and still lose a colony....and lets face it you can do EVERYTHING wrong and some times the bees are just too stubborn to give up.

Learn what you can from the past and prepare for the next season....but don't obsess over what if's for too long when there most likely is no definitive answer.

[Acebird]

I just keep thinking about this.

Duane, try thinking about how many bees there are in a package.  The smallest package worth bothering with is about 7000 bees.  If 100 bees could survive and I doubt it can with all the help you could give it there isn't enough time in one season to grow it to 7000 bees.  If you can't give up 100 bees how would you check for varroa?  Honey bees survival is dependent on a colony not on a human trying to nurse life into the colony.

[sc-bee]

I did not re-read the post... Bees are social insects as you know. A colony acts together as a compete organism. You need enough bees to complete all task of the hive. At some point by taking form others to save a struggler you endanger the stronger. As far as introducing a queen or introducing bees to a queen, you just can't dump her. She belongs to a colony or what is left of it. Either have to cage here to protect her or do a newspaper combine etc. 

[Duane]

This is a followup to the idea I was asking about in the past.

This time, I had a hive go through winter and guess they were basically starving.  I caught them before they completely perished and gave them dry sugar as it was still cold.  They continued dwindling.  It was only a small handful of bees with the queen wandering aimlessly over the comb.  I thought to myself, this is the same situation as before. 

But then it dawned on me, no it wasn't.  I had other hives!  So I took a couple of frames of bees, but thanks to everyone's comment here, I remembered I can't add a whole bunch of bees to just a few.  So I left them queenless over night in a hive, and then added them to the hive placing them away from the other bees.  I saw some bees crawl across the bars and appeared to greet the remaining bees in a non-hostile manner.  I'm not absolutely sure the queen was still there, but she was the day before.  However, in a few days, there were no eggs and I did not see a queen.  Then there were only drone cells.

Guess they killed her.  So in hindsight, it wasn't a whole 24 hours, more like just over 18.  Is that where I went wrong?