Emerging Q is stuck

[yes2matt]

I think this is kindof a neat video but I need some help interpreting it.
https://youtu.be/0_uCoxQv1x4

I went to split this hive, but they had beat me to it and (I'm thinking) swarmed last week sometime. First frame I pulled had a small fuzzy queen on it. I put that frame into a new box.

This was the second frame I pulled. You can see one capped cell, and another that has been opened from the side. Inside is a bee struggling to get out and a worker providing some encouragement.

So what happened? Did the virgin miss the sting after opening the cell? Does venom take so long to kick in?

The Q mother was my best performer. I'll miss her but it looks like I got two offspring.  :)

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[beepro]

I think you just interrupted them not on the right moment.  Given more time the virgin will take
care of the remaining QCs.   Any emerged virgin they will fight over the hive.   Time will tell.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Mr. Matt your question {Does venom take so long to kick in?}

I have seen queens disabled in seconds, one sting on the bottom of the chest (throax) 4 back legs were paralyzed died a minute or so later, the front two legs worked, but not for long.

The emerging queen may already been stung, I noticed the cell is opened from the side.
Oh, nice looking queen cells.
Blessings

[yes2matt]

She was pretty wiggly for more than a minute. So I think she had not been stung.

 With hatching birds I've learned to "never help" them out of a shell, the result is always bad. But of course this is not a bird. Ha! If I had been thinking straight I would have helped this one out onto another frame, and into another box and made two splits instead of one. Oh well it's done now.


We're coming to an expected decrease in available forage, so maybe it's better not to bee too aggressive anyway.


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[BeeMaster2]

Matt,
With the cell being opened on the side, I doubt the bees are going to accept this queen. I suspect you have found out why they open the cell on the side, she cannot get out and they can dispatch her.
Sometimes the bees do not allow the first emerging queen to kill the other queens when they plan on, what I call super swarming. They keep the queens locked in the cells and keep the free queen away from them. After that queen swarms, then they do it again and a week or less later, they swarm again. Sometimes they do this so many times the the remaining hive fails.

[yes2matt]

Matt,
With the cell being opened on the side, I doubt the bees are going to accept this queen. I suspect you have found out why they open the cell on the side, she cannot get out and they can dispatch her.
Sometimes the bees do not allow the first emerging queen to kill the other queens when they plan on, what I call super swarming. They keep the queens locked in the cells and keep the free queen away from them. After that queen swarms, then they do it again and a week or less later, they swarm again. Sometimes they do this so many times the the remaining hive fails.

Jim my goal is to bounce back from last year's summer losses. So I want to nuc up as many colonies as I can while there is enough time for them to get to full-nuc size before winter. Is there a way to leverage this behavior?

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[BeeMaster2]

Matt,
If the other queen cells have live queens you do not want to save the queen the bees opened from the side to dispatch. Some queen breeders use incubators instead of keeping them in a hive. There is no culling being done by the bees.  When the bees have access to the queen cells, they can detect the defective queens and weed them out.
You can cut the remaining queen cells, that are visible in the picture, out and put them in your mating nucs.
Listen to this hive, and all of your hives, for queens piping. That means the bees are keeping the queens in the cells after they are fully developed and you can go in and collect a bunch of queens to place in mating nucs or splits.
Jim

[yes2matt]

Ok I left the frame pictured in that hive. There was a capped Q cell on it. And I had pulled the other virgin. I didn't see any other capped cells so it sounds like this was the best I could do.

Jim the super-swarming you describe. I'm not sure exactly if that was what was going on here.  But I had a colony did exactly that last year.  Similarity: both are within a week or so of Solstice. It makes me wonder...

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