# Queenless hive?



## Beaches' Bee-Haven Apiary (May 22, 2007)

Laying workers.

First of all the bees aren't doing anything because they have no queen, so they are living longer. Secondly, the drone larva is being laid by workers, which can be dificult to get rid of. There are various methods, the most common is to shake out all your bees several yards away from the hive, return the beeless hive to it's location and re-queen. What is suppose to happen is the workers who have taken their orientation flights will return without a problem, but the laying workers (who have not taken orientation flights) cannot find their way back... they die, hopefully your problem is solved.

If you think you have enough bees to go through all that and support a queen for at least 3 weeks (time for brood to hatch) I'd go for it. G'd luck.

-Nathanael


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

Ok, I was worried about laying workers so at least I know what is going on now. I guess I let things go too long so that is a lesson for me. 

I found out my Dad had already ordered two queens for me so I have a bit of a dilemma. I have one other hive and I am pretty happy with its queen. 

What if I combined this LW hive with my queenright hive? Would there be a fight?

Like spray each frame and attached bees with sugar water and install them directly into the queenright hive. A few days later when the queens arrive take a few frames with brood and attached bees and install back into hive two and introduce the queen cage. 

The thing is I don't have many bees and want at least two hives going into winter but I don't have a lot of cash to spend on them.

Is this a solution to my dilemma?


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

Please help.

I have two queens being shipped next week and nowhere to put them where I am sure they can be of use.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Surely someone has had a similar situation happen to them?


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Perhaps if you use a Snelgrove board (http://www.beesource.com/plans/screenboard.htm)

You could then place the laying worker hive above your queenright hive and in a few weeks introduce a new queen. Meanwhile, you could take two frames of bees from your queenright hive, be sure not to get the queen, place them into an empty Nuc or super, introduce your new queen, then in a week or two combine them with the formerly laying worker hive. You could do this with both new queens, then decide how to use them later.

Since you have two queens due to arrive soon, in order to avoid losing either one, I would make up a two frame Nuc for each queen, so I could introduce them for the most likely chance of keeping them alive and healthy until I decided how to use them. I would then place the laying worker hive above the Snelgrove board on the queenright colony. Next I would move a frame of open brood into the laying worker hive, to help accelerate their suppression.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfallacies.htm#nobroodnoqueen
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

Ok thanks. What I have done is place the LW hive on top of my queenright hive separated by newspaper with holes poked in it. Hopefully that will suppress them with the brood scent.

Btw, I noticed many small larvae on the bottom board which I assume is SHB larvae. I sprayed them with windex but they survived that so I built a roaring fire and passed the bottom board over it several times which killed them. Then I thoroughly rinsed it. 

I plan to add some open brood later from the queenright hive. Only problem there is that hive is fairly small (although it is about 25% larger than the LW hive). So there are only so many such frames to use.

Question: When they say to add a frame of open brood once a week are you supposed to leave the first one in when you add the second and so on..or do you replace the existing frame with a new one?

Also, I assume when you add the frame you want no attached bees from the other hive on it, correct?


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## Beaches' Bee-Haven Apiary (May 22, 2007)

Dr.Wax said:


> Also, I assume when you add the frame you want no attached bees from the other hive on it, correct?


That, or spray the bees down with sugar water mixed w/vanilla extract or Honey-B-Healthy. Those scents mask their hive's scent and they are accepted.

-Nathanael


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

Okay. I have some vanilla here so I can use that.

Funny thing happened just as I was wrapping up putting the hive on top. It got real dark really quick and I heard a loud whoosh in the trees behind me. The wind began to roar suddenly and a BIG tree branch came crashing down near me. I had just enough time to place a brick on top of the hive and began running for the house and everything is cool now after a major storm. Thought a tornado was on my heels for sure.

Ah, mother nature.


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## Beaches' Bee-Haven Apiary (May 22, 2007)

Dr.Wax said:


> Okay. I have some vanilla here so I can use that.
> 
> Funny thing happened just as I was wrapping up putting the hive on top. It got real dark really quick and I heard a loud whoosh in the trees behind me. The wind began to roar suddenly and a BIG tree branch came crashing down near me. I had just enough time to place a brick on top of the hive and began running for the house and everything is cool now after a major storm. Thought a tornado was on my heels for sure.
> 
> Ah, mother nature.


If you don't mind, I can use this opportunity for another mother nature story. We have tons of pines surrounding our property, who in SC doesn't! Well, we had some pretty major winds coming through about a month ago, even some tornado watches. Well there were two dead pines a few yards from our bee hives, and one night I heard something that sounded like bags of shingles sliding off our roof (we had just finished re-roofing), funny thing was, I was down stairs in our two story house. The next morning mom's looking at the hives and comments that the landscape just doesn't look the same, and we found that one of the big pines had come down and barely missed our hives by 2 - 3 yards. That was a blessing! So the next day dad and I head out to the forest with the chain saw to take down the last remaining one. I'll skip the embarrassing details and just mention that the tree went the opposite direction we had intended it to go and landed about 2 yards away from out hives. The bees were a might shook up, but all intact! Sometimes mother nature gets along better without our intervention... and now I have to cut up the pine wearing a veil!

-Nathanael


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

So this does require open brood..Would moving a frame of eggs in be okay or do they not contain the necessary pheremones yet to suppress the laying workers? Are we talking eggs or larvae?

I am going to try to get this done around lunch time Monday so I need to know how to proceed by then..


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

Combining the laying worker hive with the queenright colony was a bold but risky move. Laying workers often behave as if they were queens and the other workers of the laying worker hive treat them as queens. That is where the major part of the laying worker problem resides. The bees from the laying worker hive may likely kill the queen in the queenright colony (they behave as if the laying workers are their queens and refuse to accept a normal queen), since they now have access to accomplish this dastardly deed. [I had suggested using the Snelgrove Board to allow the sharing of pheromones (queen and brood) without allowing them to get together physically.] However, it is also possible that the bees from the queenright colony may extirpate the psudo-queens (laying workers). If that is what happens then you're all set.

The suppression of laying workers created by open brood pheromones is a slow, gradual, process and usually doesn't happen in less than several weeks. Since they are now combined - for better or worse, they are already sharing all the brood and brood pheromones, even the queen pheromones (if she survived), so moving brood from one super to the other won't matter. By now you either have a larger queenright colony - problem solved, or you have a larger laying worker colony.


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

My intention is not to combine actually. My understanding is that it takes them several days to eat through the newspaper so I hope it's okay since I only did this yesterday. I will take them off the other hive today and add a frame of eggs. I liked your idea about the Snelgrove board but I am flat broke right now so I can't afford new equipment unfortunately and needed to get going on a solution since those queens are on the way. I don't understand why my father ordered two when I only needed one at the most but you play the hand you are dealt.

I agree with Michael Bush though. This is definately a labor-intensive solution and I wouldn't be doing this if they were not in my backyard.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

It usually only takes them a few hours to gnaw openings in the newspaper, which allows them to begin to co-mingle, it takes them a few days to shred and remove all traces that a newspaper had ever been there.

I'm certainly hoping that you have great beginners luck, and that you soon have a stronger queenright hive. Then, once your two new queens arrive you can borrow a frame each of sealed/emerging brood, from the queenright hive to introduce them to, sort of mini-Nucs.


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

Joseph, I checked just now and they had indeed eaten through the newspaper.  Oh well. Live and learn I guess. I also saw a few circling the pallet where the old hive was (and is again) located.

My assumptions about the newspaper method was based on statements like this: "if you slit the paper usually the combining is pretty quick (a couple of days)." I guess I was cutting it pretty close though since I only planned to leave it for 24 hours.

Sigh. I really hope my efforts to keep two colonies hasn't doomed both. I am trying to learn everything I can but it's what you don't know that gets you it seems.


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

I got a peek at the queenright hive which I had placed the other hive on top of. I saw some skirmishes but no wholesale carnage so I suspect things are okay. I guess if they did get my queen I'll know soon enough with the "queenless roar" I am so familiar with from the other hive. And no matter what I have two Italian queens on the way.

Anyway I put the top back on the queenright hive after removing the tattered newspaper. Hopefully I haven't disrupted them too much. I think I will give them a couple days rest then add a frame of eggs into the queenless hive as laid out here on the forum.

For now I am going to save my newspapers for reading only.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

At worst, working with the bees the way you are, can sure increase your experience level quickly. Which is, most usually, a very good thing for you and the bees.


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

Yes, I feel very responsible for them as living creatures and want to learn all I can but there are still some gaps in my knowledge. I am gaining a lot of experience though and hopefully my bees will survive until I can fill those in. 

One last question..about the adding of open brood to the laying worker hive. I have only one donor hive which is fairly small, although growing. So I have a limited amount of frames available to add. I take it this process could take up to three weeks adding one frame a week and checking for queen cells. 

If they haven't made queen cells should I take that frame out and replace with a new frame of open brood or keep the first one in while adding a fresh one? This is important because I don't have that many such frames to begin with. And I may need to make a nuc for the two new queens arriving as well. 

Hopefully I can pull this off.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Question: When they say to add a frame of open brood once a week are you supposed to leave the first one in when you add the second and so on

Yes.

>Also, I assume when you add the frame you want no attached bees from the other hive on it, correct?

It doesn't really matter. It will work either way. If you leave them you'll boost the weak one more.

>So this does require open brood..

Yes.

>Would moving a frame of eggs in be okay or do they not contain the necessary pheremones yet to suppress the laying workers?

Probably since in four days they will hatch and become open brood, but I'm looking for open brood.

> Are we talking eggs or larvae?

Larvae and eggs.


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