Splitting to circumvent supercedure?

[KeyLargoBees]

Posted before about these queen cells being built and populated on this new package. All three seem to have very young larvae in them but are not capped and wont be until after first brood hatch. The queen is doing a bang up job and I have almost 6 frames of all or mostly brood in a 10 frame deep so its not like she isn't laying and doing her job...I think the colony just got frustrated with no new nurse bees hatching out and decided to supersede thinking she wasn't doing her thing. First brood should start hatching out early next week (23/24). Once they do is it possible the girls will tear down the cups and make them into normal worker cells or will too much royal jelly have been fed and they are going to be queens regardless?

I have read some here and on other sites that this is somewhat common on new packages of late. Seems like I have 2 options...let them supersede her and let the colony run two queens until they kill her or kick her out and take my chances on the new queen(s) and risk something funky as the three virgins hatch out....or as some have posted do a split and remove her and several frames of brood and nurse bees and make a small split in another hive body. If I am going to do that I need to go pick up some equipment and plan. She seems to be laying well and doing her thing and it seems a shame to have the girls give up on her....

I am new to this and so far from a "club" that I am sort of doing this on my own without a mentor (thank god for youtube and forums ) so you all are stuck with me and my endless questions...so any suggestions and or opinions will be appreciated. 

[Michael Bush]

I would let them raise a new queen.  I would not interfere.  Bees have been doing this for a very long time.  There is nothing "funky" in three virgins emerging.  They will fight it out and the winner will be the queen.  Anytime I have interfered with a supersedure I have ended up regretting it.

[KeyLargoBees]

Was a very odd and concerning inspection today until the very end....

I have a second deep on the hive and it just has some frames of honey in it and some undrawn frames so I did a quick inspection on it and set it aside and proceeded to go through the bottom deep looking at frames checking on the queen cells and looking at all the frames. All three queen cells that were noted previously were open and in the process of being torn down and I found another queen cell towards the outside of the bottom deep on a frame that was previously undrawn when I moved the honey frames up...Only thing on the frame is one section of comb 6" across and a single queen cell in the middle of it and no other eggs/brood or larvae. Its like they drew out that one section with the express purpose of putting that queen cell there. Still no sign of the old queen or any of the new queens....hive is calm and everything looked good...some capped brood, pollen, honey and Larvae in all states but NO EGGS  and no queen visible marked or unmarked on any frames. I was getting very worried but figured she may still be a virgin and unmarked and the old queen could have been kicked out so I decided to put everything back together and check back in a few days to look for eggs. Turned to the bench I was using the rest the top deep on that has only 2 frames of drawn Honey and there is a cluster of bees on top of the frames that drew my eye and voila...new unmarked queen fat and sassy...looks to already be mated with a fat abdomen....no idea why she was out in the open with her court or what she was doing in the upper box with no comb to  lay in up there yet but I very quickly and gently put her royal cuteness back in the hive and closed things up.....will check on Monday or Tuesday to see if she has started laying yet and what happens with that unopened queen cell that's still left.

Something new every day...and its so hard not knowing whats going on inside ;-)

[rookie2531]

New queens and virgins are skiddish and run around a lot when we are inspecting. I have seen them on the walls inside the boxes, on the bottom and on foundation that had very little bees on it and not even started being drawn yet. Something I didn't know until someone told me this year, if those other cells had viable queens in them, then she most likely just stung through the wax and killed them. The nurse bees will get to them when they need to.

Congrads on finding her though.

[BeeMaster2]

KLB,
You can cause your bees to kill the queen by inspecting too often. New queens need to get established before you do full inspections. You can look at supers above the brood or open the top and look down between the frames but full inspectionsof the brood area can cause the bees to blame the queen for the intrusions and ball her. After she is established, then you can get away with inspections every 7 to 10 days preferably the later.
Jim

[Colobee]

From "The Hive and the Honeybee" - Management of package bees :

"There comes a critical time in the progress of the package colony, usually about 3 weeks after it is hived when the new brood produced from the eggs of the queen reached a relatively high point in proportion to the number of adult bees. Many of the (package bees) will have died, and no young bees will have emerged. It is often at this time that supercedure ... occurs..., probably because the population is out of balance. This can largely be overcome by giving the package colony a comb of emerging brood and bees from a healthy colony, placing this comb next to the brood combs in the package colony. This should be done about two weeks after the package is installed; colonies so treated will gain surprisingly in strength."
------------------

I do this all the time. Sprinkling a little syrup on both the new frame of brood, and across the top of the package colony brood frames greatly enhances the introduction. "Surprisingly" is an understatement, in my experience. I've frequently seen packages pack in 100-150 lbs of surplus in the first season.
 
The key seems to be "the population is out of balance...". Sometimes tearing down those queen cells gives the bees just enough time to re-establish the balance. Other times it can be disastrous - for example if the reining queen is already gone. Michael is
probably right - perhaps the best thing to do is to just let them sort it out.

[KeyLargoBees]

They are in the process of sorting out now. Now that I have seen the superceedure and that the new queen is in and appears to have been mated (basing this on her movement pattern and the size of her abdomen) I am going to let them go for 7-10 days before I peek in again and see where that gets us. The colony while active has slowed considerably during transition but I think that was a case of the original queen starting out strong and then having her laying falter some which is why they superceded her. Who knows....only the bees.

I am kicking myself for starting with only one hive and not having a second one to compare progress to but it is what it is. and I will make it work.

Thanks for the responses guys.

[biggraham610]

Anytime I have interfered with a supersedure I have ended up regretting it.

X2 G