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General Q&A, Bee chat and only Bee chat please
 #924  by DianeBees
 02 Oct 2018, 19:23
I have a colony which decided to supercede mid-August.
A month later we saw a new Queen but no eggs. That was the one and only time we saw her. I haven't seen her since that first sighting and there has been no sign of eggs or brood. Nor has there been any signs of ELWs.
I'd like to put a frame of eggs in from another colony but there aren't really enough eggs to spare.
I had another final look today to look for signs of ELW before combining with a nuc, and the bees certainly didn't behave Qless.
I'm suffering from paralysis-by-analysis. Do I ignore my gut and risk combining or do I leave them to overwinter with what is probably a duff Queen and very few winter bees?
HELP!!!!!!!

PL via FB
 #926  by NigelP
 02 Oct 2018, 21:52
Leave them be,.
If you unite with a nuc you risk (if a queen is present) ending up with her killing your good queen and now you are 2 colonies down.
More likely queen is off lay at the moment...they will come on again.
If she is duff, then you lose one colony not potentially 2....those bees you are potentially uniting are the short lived summer bees....
If she comes into lay you get 2 colonies next spring.
 #927  by Patrick
 02 Oct 2018, 22:17
Regarding the state of the hive it’s difficult to be definitive about what’s going on as there are several possible scenarios. Was the original queen marked or clipped or particularly distinctive?If not, are you sure the supercedure actually took place? It is quite possible that the original queen is still present and is, as you say, duff. It doesn’t sound like they are queenless so a test frame of eggs is unlikely to prove much and it’s too late to get emergency queens mated reliably.

I think my action in this situation would depend on how many hives I had. If it was my only one plus a healthy nuc, not being sure what was going on I would leave be and ensure I had at least a functioning nuc come spring.

If I had other colonies as insurance I would say enough is enough, make absolutely sure the hive has no queen then combine and have fewer but probably better colonies to overwinter. Make every effort to ensure it’s queenless before combining or there is a risk of the duff queen taking over the nuc as well.

It’s easy to be all superior about overwintering poor colonies being daft - unless you have very limited choice in the matter.
 #928  by Patrick
 02 Oct 2018, 22:21
Oops just saw Nigel had already responded in the interim.

Fortunately we seem to have suggested similar lines to take. Most improbable in beekeepers..
 #930  by Caroline
 03 Oct 2018, 00:25
Two or three years ago I had a colony that appeared to have no laying queen for eight weeks in the Autumn, but the colony behaved 'queen right'. There was no brood and despite having a good track record of finding queens she eluded me. I didn't panic, the colony went into the winter in that condition. At the first inspection the following spring there was a queen and brood; and she was the original queen.

Bees will always continue to do things that flummox humans; I work on the basis that the bees know what they are doing.

P.S. Does anyone know how I get my name to appear rather than my BBKA membership number!!
Caroline
 #934  by DianeBees
 03 Oct 2018, 11:37
62.13.162 wrote:
03 Oct 2018, 00:25


P.S. Does anyone know how I get my name to appear rather than my BBKA membership number!!
Caroline

we will ask Chris!
 #938  by AdamD
 03 Oct 2018, 12:00
Although it's getting late in the season, you can 'borrow' a frame of brood from one colony and then replace it a week later if you wish. Subject to not transferring disease of course. And if it's close by you can also potentially move the nuc in the place of the 'suspect' hive to bleed off the flyers to the nuc thus strengthening it if you consider the duff hive a hopeless cause but don't want to unite it in case there is a queen there.

(The nuc and the duff colony could both be moved 3 feet per flying day until they are close together).