# Am I Queenless, Virgin Queen, or Honeybound?



## JYawn (Dec 6, 2011)

Maybe we can get some more experienced opinions on this, but my guess is that it's probably just not been quite long enough. Technically if the queen truly hatched out on or around the 19th then we're talking about roughly 2 weeks time. She should have been mated within a few days... possibly up to about a week at the most. Egg laying should typically begin after about 3 or 4 days but could be longer depending on how the mating goes.

So if all went well we would hope to be seeing eggs within 1 week... larva then should be spotted within 3 or 4 days after laying.

So really it could just be a case of things taking just a little longer than what we would expect, but it shouldn't really be much longer at all before you see some larva at least.

If any of this info I'm giving is wrong please correct me, but this is the order of things as I understand it.


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## MacNachtan (May 1, 2012)

Thanks for your reply JYawn! You were right...it just took a little longer than expected. We had a stretch of several rainy days and she probably wasn't able to get out and get mated for awhile. She evidently did get out on enough mating flights eventually though, because she's been busy in the last week and a half. Lots of combs packed full of capped brood...a much better pattern than the queen they superceded. Guess they knew what they were doing. When those bees hatch, the hive will be exploding.

Matt M.


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## JYawn (Dec 6, 2011)

Good to hear! I just inspected my own hive this past weekend and saw my first batch of brood emerging out of their cells. Hopefully we'll both have some booming hives over the next weeks.


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## blist (Jun 15, 2010)

had one of my hive swarms and actually thought it was queenless because it went for an extremely long time and I still couldn't find the queen or open brood, this was after I saw hatched queen cells...point being that in certain circumstances perhaps it takes a while before a virgin queen mates and starts to lay, I have no idea why it took her so long but I did actually spot her last week, open brood as well


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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

Am I Queenless, Virgin Queen, or Honeybound?
Sounds like a rather personal question that belongs in another thread?


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