# Is this a queen?



## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

No.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

RV, I see your plan was to not treat and not use comb foundation. But that's just what you are not going to do. What beekeeping did you do?


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

That is a dead queen.

Jean-Marc


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

jean-marc said:


> That is a dead queen.
> 
> Jean-Marc


Looks more like a dead drone to me, but, I'll bow to those with more experience..


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

Oldtimer said:


> RV, I see your plan was to not treat and not use comb foundation. But that's just what you are not going to do. What beekeeping did you do?


honestly, not much. 
I checked them a couple of time a month once they got going. I never took any honey. They have a good bit for me to take or give to the other hive.
I had not expected much from these "package" bees because I wasn't treating them and they were not treatment free stock.. it was basically and experiment to see how far they'd go.

if that is a queen, it's not the one they started with. 

They were roaring up until this last freeze.


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

jean-marc said:


> That is a dead queen.
> 
> Jean-Marc


if that is a queen, it's not the one they started with. 
it almost want to think they re-queened too late to build up before the cold.


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

grozzie2 said:


> Looks more like a dead drone to me, but, I'll bow to those with more experience..


it doesn't look rounded enough on the back end to me to be a drone .. but I'm also not an expert.


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## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

Looks like a dead queen to me


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## Clayton Huestis (Jan 6, 2013)

The eyes don't look big and bulging like a drones. Looks like either a poorly developed queen or one that was not laying or both. Looks like a varroa mite on its back.


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

Clayton Huestis said:


> The eyes don't look big and bulging like a drones. Looks like either a poorly developed queen or one that was not laying or both. Looks like a varroa mite on its back.


broke out the magnifying glass, that's a chunk of wax like the one on the head but smaller.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Clayton Huestis said:


> The eyes don't look big and bulging like a drones. Looks like either a poorly developed queen or one that was not laying or both.


I've never seen hair on the thorax of a queen, not in the day old virgins running around in a mating nuc, and not on the one that once emerged right in my hand. The bee in the photo appears to have hair on it's thorax which I why I'm not convinced it's a queen.


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## bison (Apr 27, 2011)

Dead queen.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

The hair on the thorax attracted my attention also, a little odd, but it is a queen. I suspected a very young one, but since you say there was brood I must be wrong in that as if it was newly hatched it couldn't have mated and started laying in winter.

As to cause of death of the colony, the belief many new beekeepers have that their particular package bees will defy the odds and survive without beekeeper attention to varroa mites. 

Although not a lot of details or pics are given, what are given are consistant with death by varroa. - Had a decent amount of honey, had brood but dead while trying to hatch, very small cluster unable to withstand cold. Those alone are not 100% proof of varroa, but they are consistant with it.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

looks like the tiny runt of a queen i found in my last dead out rv. did you find much mite frass in the brood comb or uncap and inspect any of the brood remaining?


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> looks like the tiny runt of a queen i found in my last dead out rv. did you find much mite frass in the brood comb or uncap and inspect any of the brood remaining?


I saw some frass but not much. There was what looked like dead mites on the BB, but not as much as I'd expect. I was losing the light so I stopped digging. There was very little (but some) capped brood and I plan to dig in for a better look tomorrow. get some tweezers and pull out the capped and emerging brood.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood. how much drawn comb did you end up with between the two hives?


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> understood. how much drawn comb did you end up with between the two hives?


I have almost 60 mediums frames fully drawn out. I took one frame of honey from the deadout today. it's very taste.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Virgin queen in one of my hives.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

R_V said:


> I have almost 60 mediums frames fully drawn out. I took one frame of honey from the deadout today. it's very taste.


excellent. do you have all mediums and how many hives are you shooting for next season?

nice looking queen there sibylle.


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> excellent. do you have all mediums and how many hives are you shooting for next season?
> 
> nice looking queen there sibylle.


yes, all medium. 
I'm hoping the surviving one makes it and still hoping to get a couple of TF NUCs. 
I had planned to re-queen these 2 back in the late summer/fall but wanted to see how they did, and build up some resources.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood. are you using 8 or 10 frame mediums?


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> understood. are you using 8 or 10 frame mediums?


10. 
I have four 10 frame deeps too, just in case I get some deep NUCs


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

excellent. about how many frames of honey total do you have and are you able to extract without crushing the comb?


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> excellent. about how many frames of honey total do you have and are you able to extract without crushing the comb?


I hadn't plan to extract any of the first 60. I was going to leave those frames for the bees. 

now that I have a dead out I'll probably cut a couple of frames for cut comb and freeze/store the rest for spring.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood. (and sorry for so many questions)

12-16 medium frames of honey for the remaining colony is more than adequate for overwintering as well as providing for a robust build up. any more than that pretty much gets in the way and makes swarm prevention more difficult. next year's nucs will have next year's nectar and won't really need that honey.

i would consider using a small hand cranked extractor to carefully remove (and enjoy!) the honey from any additional frames in order to have as much empty comb on hand as possible. frames of empty comb are very useful when it comes to promoting build up and helping with swarm prevention (checkerboarding), as well as helping to give the next nucs and splits a really good head start.

assuming the remaining colony makes it here are some things that i might consider trying if i were sitting on the resources you are at this time.

1. promote strong build up of the remaining colony by checkerboarding 3-4 supers over the broodnest once brooding resumes, (first warm days with pollen coming in late Jan to early Feb).

2. once the colony builds up to 4 or so supers full of bees, (late march to early april or so for birmingham), perform an 'artificial swarm' whereby you split out the queen and a couple of frames of brood along with some resources into a single medium while leaving the parent hive good and strong so that it can pull out quality queen cells.

3. go back in 7-10 days looking for queen cells in the parent hive and divide it up into 2 or 3 more single medium nucs if you can.

4. once the first mediums get full of bees i would try putting the empty deeps underneath and allow the bees to fill them with comb working their way down.

you might also consider using your deeps for making a swarm trap or two, using a single frame of drawn brood comb for 'bait'.

i'll be focusing a lot more on nuc production in 2018 and if what i have in mind works i should have some medium nucs as well as deep ones. watch my thread and send me a pm when we get to that point in the season if you are still interested.


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> understood. (and sorry for so many questions)
> 
> 12-16 medium frames of honey for the remaining colony is more than adequate for overwintering as well as providing for a robust build up. any more than that pretty much gets in the way and makes swarm prevention more difficult. next year's nucs will have next year's nectar and won't really need that honey.
> 
> ...


sounds like a plan.
should gently hose out the uncapped nectar (possibly syrup) in the deadout frames?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

the uncapped ones (even syrup) will be perfect for checkerboarding, and the mostly capped ones (especially real honey) most suitable for harvesting. 

i'm not sure about hosing any out, i would probably set them outside and allow them to get robbed out instead.


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> the uncapped ones (even syrup) will be perfect for checkerboarding, and the mostly capped ones (especially real honey) most suitable for harvesting.
> 
> i'm not sure about hosing any out, i would probably set them outside and allow them to get robbed out instead.


sounds good. just bought this 2 frame manual extractor for $49 from Kelly on a year end sale.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

perfect. that should let you spin slow and easy with your foundationless frames.

to start with and for just a few frames the cappings scratcher at the bottom of that page would be adequate. it's the one i have. it's made well and it works good. 

for more than a few frames an uncapping knife with variable heat control is pretty much a must have. 

i forgot to ask, are you using 9 or 10 frames in your 10 frame boxes? with 10 the knife leaves a lot that you have to scratch off anyway, with 9 the honey frames are fatter and the knife gets most of it.


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> perfect. that should let you spin slow and easy with your foundationless frames.
> 
> to start with and for just a few frames the cappings scratcher at the bottom of that page would be adequate. it's the one i have. it's made well and it works good.
> 
> ...


10 .. ever use a heat gun?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i have not tried a heat gun r_v. 

one nice thing about using the scratcher is that it leaves the comb at full depth whereas cutting with a knife takes off some of the depth. walt believed that made a difference with respect to brooding during the early part of the build up but i haven't noticed it myself. 

i do try to checkerboard with empty comb that has brood in it before whenever possible, but a lot of those frames have been uncapped with a knife.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Dead queen, perhaps a late supercedure due to mite pressure.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Definitely NOT a drone. Drones have a blunt back end, not tapered like that. A good thing to use to distinguish a queen from a worker is to look for pollen baskets.


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## R_V (Aug 20, 2016)

extracted 29lbs of honey. 

I put the wet frames out in the yard and I have bees coming from the north and south to clean them out. The ones from the north are following the same path as the bees that were checking out my swarm trap last spring. Perhaps I'll catch them this spring now that I have some old comb.

Won a NUC at the JeffCo beekeepers meeting  so I'm half way recovered :thumbsup:. 
I should have taken the bee to the meeting with me to get one of the experts to look at it but it hadn't crossed my mind until just now.


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