# Hello out there! Anyone see any queens wandering about?



## TothePoint (Aug 23, 2011)

Hi all,

This is my second year beekeeping and I absolutely love it. My bees, however, seem to delight in perplexing me.

My first hive did not make it through the winter. I started again, and the queen I got with my knew batch of bees was awesome! Too awesome. She filled the hive up so quickly they began to get overcrowded. I added on another deep super and a honey super. Even so, In July I found twenty queen cells in various stages of development. I didn't find my super queen but there were still eggs. Hoping I had just overlooked her, I culled the queen cells and took some of the honey to give them more room, knowing that if she was gone they still had eggs to make into new queens.

A week later an inspection showed no new eggs and several queens cells where the other eggs had been. I split the hive, dividing the queen cells, hoping that at least one would produce a good queen.

Since I knew exactly how old the queen cells were, I waited until they should have been laying to inspect again. Mysteriously, I found no old queen cells, no new queens, and no new eggs or brood in either hive.

Does anyone have any idea what happened? Does everyone agree that I should send away for new queens immediately?


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## Specialkayme (Sep 4, 2005)

First, welcome to the site!

Second, can you add dates (or relative dates) to what happened?

The reason I bring it up, is it can take up to four weeks for a swarm cell to make it from egg to laying queen. If you checked two or three weeks later, you might not notice any swarm cells because they all hatched, might not notice any new queens because they were virgins (and smaller) and might not notice any new eggs because she hasn't started laying just yet.


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## TothePoint (Aug 23, 2011)

July 29 was the date I removed the old cells and eggs were still present in the hive. One week later was when I reinspected and split the Hive. August 22 was when I checked to see if the new queens were present. 

I should also add that the hives have built new queen cups, witch are empty, of course.


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## TothePoint (Aug 23, 2011)

I decided to give my possible queens a few more days to show themselves. Today I when I checked the original hive I did find a few eggs. They were placed pretty sporadically, though. Does this mean my new queen is a dud? Does she just need more time to get the hang of it? I am running short on time to get a replacement queen if I do need one. Ahhhhh!

I found something even more perplexing in the split I made. Turns our those extra queen cups I found were not empty. One of them is sealed and another appears to have larva. I don't understand how this could be. There is not any other larva left anywhere from when I made the split. And no eggs anywhere. Can queens be late bloomers?? How could the original hive have a newly laying queen and the other one still in her queen cup? I saw no eggs at all when I split them! 

Help! Please! I would like to find out what to do before it's too late!


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Sometimes, if replacement queens aren't 100%, the bees will supersede them almost immediately, from some of the eggs they do manage to lay.


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## AmericasBeekeeper (Jan 24, 2010)

Welcome!


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