BBKA Forum

British Beekeepers Association Official Forum 

  • Possible Queenless Hive

  • Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
Beginners forum, ask beekeeping related questions and get help from other experienced beekeepers. Please use the Search Feature please to avoid duplicated threads
 #7290  by Steve 1972
 22 May 2020, 10:14
My main apiary is just shy of 80 miles away.. during the spring and summer i am there every weekend during the flow..one good thing about this lockdown carry on is the roads have been dead and it has been a pleasure to travel..
 #7311  by gwt_uk
 22 May 2020, 20:39
Thank you for the warm welcome. Get through to my colonies as much as possible (usually every two weeks),...but with two small children taking priority it is sometimes difficult! I have very much enjoyed beekeeping so far and all the challenges it presents! I also like the fact that the learning never ends and a lot of the time the bees do what they want...not what I want ha ha!
Patrick wrote:
21 May 2020, 22:52
Welcome to the Forum GWT.

You say you may have a problem seeing your bees for a while. Do you manage 7 day inspections normally or does life get in the way occasionally? It’s entirely reasonable.

The reason I ask is that the commonest cause of queenless ness this time of year is our good friend swarming. I note the top box was rammed with stores which may have meant they were good to go- it’s been very swarmy weather this year. If you miss a couple of weeks it is possible for cells to have been raised, the queen left and a virgin is now wandering about the hive. If all the remaining capped brood had emerged (at maybe a thousand or more a day) it quickly refills the hive with adult bees and seems unlikely at a glance to conceivably have swarmed.

Meanwhile, some worker bees very quickly remove all signs of the empty cell and others the virgin may have killed and we are left none the wiser anything happened.

It’s the fact you have empty polished cells suggests you already have a (non laying yet) queen in there. Commonly, a really hopelessly queenless colony will store nectar and pollen in the brood frames as they know there is no other use for it. Also some defensiveness is quite likely. A really hopelessly queenless colony can be a total shocker.

I wouldn’t be surprised if when you get to see them your test frame is all capped or emerged brood and, cross fingers, you find some eggs as well. Let us know what you find. :)
 #7312  by gwt_uk
 22 May 2020, 20:44
Steve 1972 wrote:
22 May 2020, 10:14
My main apiary is just shy of 80 miles away.. during the spring and summer i am there every weekend during the flow..one good thing about this lockdown carry on is the roads have been dead and it has been a pleasure to travel..
Yes my colonies are about 75 miles away. Its quite surprising how easy the drive is without traffic!
 #7313  by Patrick
 22 May 2020, 21:18
There is a really good point in all this. Just as we often reflect on geographical differences to the realities of the beekeeping calendar, so are there in how and where we keep bees. Many books and articles are written by those with extensive experience of - to quote Alan Campion - Bees at the bottom of the garden.

Their version of beekeeping is quite understandably based on almost daily contact on a whim. Trying to apply some of those management strategies - even just doing something the evening before and the next thing the morning after, just doesn’t practically translate to a 100 mile round trip each time. It requires different strategies when you may only be able to visit weeks apart. One book with experience of long distance beekeeping is Donald Sims Sixty Years with Bees. It’s a good read on any account.

Anybody else think of good distance beekeeping books? Manley probably also springs to mind.
 #7316  by Murox
 23 May 2020, 09:50
Jean Hurpin, author and founder of the magazine L’Abeille de France, modified the Layens hive to enable management with one hive visit per year. He reckoned Layens hives were wonderfully suited for remote apiaries. But I guess horizontal doesn't fit in with the vertical teachings these days; but there are reportedly over a million Layens hives in use in Spain alone and the hive enjoys a strong resurgence in the US.
 #7344  by gwt_uk
 23 May 2020, 20:19
Patrick wrote:
21 May 2020, 22:52
Welcome to the Forum GWT.

You say you may have a problem seeing your bees for a while. Do you manage 7 day inspections normally or does life get in the way occasionally? It’s entirely reasonable.

The reason I ask is that the commonest cause of queenless ness this time of year is our good friend swarming. I note the top box was rammed with stores which may have meant they were good to go- it’s been very swarmy weather this year. If you miss a couple of weeks it is possible for cells to have been raised, the queen left and a virgin is now wandering about the hive. If all the remaining capped brood had emerged (at maybe a thousand or more a day) it quickly refills the hive with adult bees and seems unlikely at a glance to conceivably have swarmed.

Meanwhile, some worker bees very quickly remove all signs of the empty cell and others the virgin may have killed and we are left none the wiser anything happened.

It’s the fact you have empty polished cells suggests you already have a (non laying yet) queen in there. Commonly, a really hopelessly queenless colony will store nectar and pollen in the brood frames as they know there is no other use for it. Also some defensiveness is quite likely. A really hopelessly queenless colony can be a total shocker.

I wouldn’t be surprised if when you get to see them your test frame is all capped or emerged brood and, cross fingers, you find some eggs as well. Let us know what you find. :)
Just a quick question on this. If my colony turns out to be Queenless and they are now making a new queen from the test frame I put in - Is there a danger of the population dwindling to the point of collapse whilst they wait for a virgin queen to hatch, mate and start laying? I ask this as my father lives where my colonies are located and he has noticed reduced activity on the problem colony (which was my strongest colony). My other two colonies started the Spring with much smaller populations but the activity is now very good and on last inspection all looked good.


Appreciate you help.
 #7353  by Patrick
 24 May 2020, 00:07
Good question. A queenless and broodless colony will have less imperative to forage so it’s to be expected to see less activity. Also as I suspect they swarmed out maybe three weeks or more ago (by there being no remaining capped brood) the total flying population will be reduced. If there is an unlaying virgin present or your test frame raises queen cells, you will know the score soon enough before the bees dwindle out. You may decide if it is to be another month or more before you get a queen back in lay, rather than wait you are better off uniting the remaining bees to one of your other colonies as by that time they will be getting old.

Nature dictates they will eventually die off at a similar rate they were born, so if the queen was laying at a thousand a day so in due course they will (roughly) die off at a thousand a day. Unfortunately in such cases as this, as you point out, there is no recruitment of young bees to replace them.

Two good points to take from it however. Firstly, quick out of the blocks big colonies can be a handful to keep together - your slow starters that don’t swarm will actually bring you in a decent spring and summer honey crop. The early mega colonies boosted by pollen supplants and constant feeding beloved of YouTube commercial outfits are often used to take splits and nucs for sale, rather than kept at that peak for months on end. The takeaway from that is to consider boosting slower colonies by taking capped frames from the over strong ones, so called balancing colonies within each apiary.

Secondly, the very real impact of swarming and possible cast swarming on the remaining so called parent colony. It is highly vulnerable to replacement queen misadventures, inadequate numbers to forage sufficiently to put on a surplus to survive winter, or simply defend itself against robbing bees or wasps. Many post swarm colonies unassisted by beekeepers simply don’t make it to the next Spring.

Get on top of swarming and the rest follows on. Mostly.
 #7361  by AndrewLD
 24 May 2020, 12:18
Patrick wrote:
24 May 2020, 00:07
You may decide if it is to be another month or more before you get a queen back in lay, rather than wait you are better off uniting the remaining bees to one of your other colonies as by that time they will be getting old.

Get on top of swarming and the rest follows on. Mostly.
If going down the uniting route you will of course ensure the colony is queenless before uniting with a queenright colony? Your test frame will help you there but I suggest you'll need to look fairly quickly in case a queen emerges and the cell gets torn down?????
Just beware with the slower colonies, we are still early in the season and there's plenty of time to get caught out :D