# Am I queenless



## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Is there any brood? You need to pull comb from the middle, typically not much brood on the outside frames, especially near the top bars anyway so your pictures don't really tell us much.


----------



## Darenjm (Jun 16, 2015)

I can't see any brood. I'm a little hesitant to pull out the middle frames. Do you think I should just leave them alone for now and wait it out to see if any brood does emerge after 21 days or so?


----------



## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Don't wait, just get in there and take a look, it's easier to see if you have capped brood, that'll tell you if you have a queen or not or any young larva at least.


----------



## Darenjm (Jun 16, 2015)

Ok, will do. Thanks for the help.


----------



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

How did the bees get from Bogota to Boyaca? It's possible your queen was injured in the trip, or during the shake-in. Did you see her at any time? Also, IIRC Boyaca is fairly high and cool, perhaps this is not the prime season for brooding?

Are these your first bees?

I am not a TB beekeepeer, but after 2 1/2 weeks I would expect to see at least some mature larvae and/or capped brood. And I wouldn't hesitate to expose the center combs to see what's going on. You don't want to leave a colony queenless for any extended time as they can develop into a "laying worker" colony, which is hard to correct.

Pick a decent time/day when it's warmish and not raining and get in there and check those combs. Waiting the 21 days to see if new bees emerge is not really done for workers, that's primarily when you have queen cells that are maturing. New bees and old bees are hard to tell apart - larvae and capped brood are the signs of a queenright hive.

I am a little confused by one other thing: you mentioned this was a nuc that you shook in. Does that mean you abandonned the capped brood that was in the nuc, or was there none? If there was none, then I'm not sure you had an established nuc, more like a package with a new queen installed. If this was truly a nuc, it would have had some frames with eggs and capped brood, etc., if it was queenright.

Either way, you should sort this out as soon as possible and get a new queen in there ASAP if you are truly queenless. There are various ways to install a queen, depending on the situation.

_Buena suerte!_

Enjambres


----------



## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Need to go thru your hive and take your time. Look for eggs, larva, and if you see them you can stop right then in you want. Finding eggs means you probably have a queen unless the bees have went "laying worker" on you. You can not afford to wait. Laying workers will lay multiple eggs n one cell and the eggs will be not centered well. If you have laying workers...then you have a serious problem. Can't stress enough that you need to go thru that hive.

It's hard to find a queen for a new beekeeper. Watch a lot of videos where they show queens. You'll learn what to look for. You'd be looking for a bee with an extended abdomen that is nearly as big as a worker bee.


----------



## Darenjm (Jun 16, 2015)

Hi Enjambres,
I drove the bee from Bogota in my pick up truck, kind of a bumpy ride as the roads around here are mostly un-paved. I never did see the queen in this package (it was a package, not a nuc - still learning the proper terminology as these are my first bees). The way it was set up was the bees were in a four frame langstroth style box. No brood and I just shook them all in from that box. 

This was my fourth attempt and getting bees in my TBH. The first two had caged queens. One of those boxes had a gap and most of the bees escaped on the drive from Bogota. The beekeeper that I purchased that one from did replace it and that is what I have now. The other one from my first attempt had a caged queen and a good amount of bees in there. They started to build comb but once the queen got out of her cage the whole colony just split, all of them.

Where we are in Boyaca is pretty warm, about 80 year round with a good six month rainy season. The beekeeper I get my bees from is right in Bogota, it's a lot cooler there. He has about 100 hives in a few different locations around the city and he tells that right now it is honey season, in fact he's waiting for a good day to harvest some honey from one of his apiaries this week. He's invited me along to help out and learn.

So, if i do go into my hive tomorrow and don't find any larvae, capped brood or eggs what then? What is keeping the bees there anyway with out a queen? I have set up a feeder in the back of the hive with 1:1 sugar water, they seem to be using it.

Thank you, I appreciate your help.

Daren


----------



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

So this package didn't have a caged queen? That may be a problem as a package of bees is usually just a certain amount of bees shaken into a box and not a functioning social unit. The cohesiveness of the colony is predicated on the bees accepting that their fate depends on accepting and nurturing the caged queen.

A queen just turned loose before the bees have made up their minds about this is at risk. 

Anyway, the key thing now is to look for the signs of brood as soon as possible. Seeing queens and eggs is sometimes hard for beginners, but not so late-stage larvae and capped brood. At two and half weeks you certainly should have good sized larvae that look like chubby white grubs all curled up in their cells.

As soon as you see good sized patches of that you can stop and know your hive is queenright. If you can't see any larvae or capped brood, you will need to get a queen in there very soon. Is there a nearby beekeeper you can ask to give it a second going over if you can't see anything?

I asked about how you got from Bogota because I remember the trip as being pretty rough over very bumpy and curvy dirt roads and I wondered how the bees had traveled. I haven't made that drive in more than fifty years, but it doesn't sound like it has improved all that much. However it astounds me that I can send and receive multiple messages with you in the course of an evening. When I lived in Colombia there was no internet, but even more there was no telephone or, even electricity on our finca We had a _planta_ that we ran for a few hours every evening and we communicated via short wave radio. 

Enjambres


----------



## biggraham610 (Jun 26, 2013)

Its hard to see eggs on the edges of comb from that angle. You arent going to hurt anything ,,pull a couple bars from the center of the cluster and find out. G


----------



## Darenjm (Jun 16, 2015)

Enjambres,
No, the roads probably aren't much better. But, they are improving the road from Sisga to Guateque and should be done in a year or so. That will make things a lot better. We are in Tenza so it will be awhile, if ever, that the road from Guateque to here will be improved. I'm originally from NYC and my wife is from Tunja, which is how I ended up here. As far as internet, not much better, I have a modem from a cell phone company that I plug into my computer every time I want to get online. It works though. Where did you live in when you lived here?

Thank you for all your advice, I am going to head out to my hive today and take a look around. If I don't find a queen I will get one from Bogota. Not much in the way of beekeepers around here, none that advertise anyway. I'll post back here what I find.

Daren

Enjambre? does that translate to swarm in English?


----------



## Darenjm (Jun 16, 2015)

Hi Aunt Betty,
Ok, followed your advice and went through the hive. Total of 5 small combs. And, I did see capped brood, larvae and some eggs. I didn't see the queen though. I thought I would for sure with so few combs to look through. I do have a picture and to my rookie eyes there is a bee on the comb there that I could convince myself is a queen. I attached it here if you can take a look too and tell me what you think.


----------



## jcolon (Sep 12, 2014)

Nice. Queens can be elusive, especially first year queens. I think you got yourself a hive. Now is a matter of developing them. With your climate I would expect quick build up.


----------



## Darenjm (Jun 16, 2015)

Hi Jose,
So at this point I will just leave them alone and check back again in another week. Some of the brood should hatch by then, right? About 21-22 days for a worker is what I've read.


----------



## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

I see 2 eggs in your first picture blow it up and look 3 cells up from the bottom bee with her but pointing up, hard to see but its there


----------



## jcolon (Sep 12, 2014)

yes,21 days for worker from egg.


----------



## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

No queen in that pic, but some nice looking capped brood.

Queens generally have a differently colored abdomen, as well as it being much larger. Generally not stripey like the workers, but solid color, generally amber.

They are elusive little buggers sometimes, but your little op there looks like it's chugging along just fine.

Congrats!


----------



## biggraham610 (Jun 26, 2013)

Congrats! 

Queen Pics. G


----------



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Congratulations, you have a queen-right colony - isn't that exciting?

I don't think looking for a non-striped abdomen is a good way to find queens. I only have one queen without stripes, all the rest are striped. My bees are all swarm-mutts, so who knows what genetics they have.

Queen-seeing is something that just comes with practice. It's partly a behavioral thing - queen bees move in different ways from workers. And they are bigger, once they get going with laying. And I usually can easily see my girls when I'm NOT looking for them, and I can search and search, in vain sometimes, when I really need to find one. 

Your internet setup is exactly what I use up here in NY, and I am only twenty miles from my state Capital. No broadband for me.

When we lived in Colombia, it was on a finca outside of Rionegro in Antioquia, and we spent a lot of time on a ranch down on the Rio La Miel.

Yes, the origin of my user name is the Spanish word for swarms, as all of my bees came to my farm as swarms.

Enj.


----------



## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

Well I guess that's why they say generalizations are generally wrong. ;-)

Most of the pics of queens I've seen in 4-5 years have had more solid colored abdomens, ymmv. Mostly ambers with a bit of stripey right at the end maybe, a few full stripeys and a few solid black.

Interesting note - if your worker bees are stripey, but you see some that appear to have all black abdomens, it's because the amber stripes are actually little hairs that can get rubbed off with age or wrasslin'. I thought I had some black invader bees when fighting the robbing wars, but read that somewhere. Cleared up the mystery for me. I was kind of hoping there were some black genetics in the neighborhood, for some reason black bees seem very exotic to me.


----------

