Dead queen in the winter months

[Ewen]

Hi

I’m not sure if this question have been asked before.
I was wondering what happens to the hive when the queen dies for whatever reasons during winter, like are they going to raise another one and then she will mate in the spring?
But then again the queen does lay little or no eggs during winter, right?
So are they like screwed then

[NigelP]

It is unlikely they will raise a new queen if old one dies during winter, but not impossible. Any Virgin queen has around a 21 day window to get mated. Winter there are no drones and precious little flying weather.
So doomed basically.
Either a drone laying virgin or laying workers come late spring.

[AdamD]

If there's a virgin then the workers might remove a lot of the eggs as they will not want drones in winter so come spring and you inspect the hive, there could still be bees in there. With removal of the queen, they could be united with another colony which will help it along - even with these bees being old ones.

[Alfred]

With no new worker eggs and therefore nurse bees,the demographic becomes predominantly older and fewer.Soon there will be noone feeding the queen and she dies.
One more reason to refrain from inspections out of season

[AdamD]

Are you sure that happens? I don't have any experience of that and can't recall reading that's what usually happens.

[MickBBKA]

All my colonies have perspex crown boards and late winter this year I saw drones under one in Jan or Feb, can't quite remember which. So nothing to lose I opened it up and found a single emerged qc and a new unmarked or clipped queen who obviously was never able to mate after probably a December supersedure. I removed her and united another small colony that was down to 2 half frames of bees still with brood and eggs and queen but all looking very cold. They survived and had quite a good season this year. There is never a yes or no with bees.