# queen-less bees tearing down queen cells, Why? im stumped



## Cyric30 (Mar 29, 2016)

Ok, this has me stumped.
Date: May 5 
Location: North Central AR.
Weather: Clear, temps H-80's L-50's

This is my second year off beekeeping, and first year raising queens
I have successfully made small batches of queens to do my splits this year, so while i am no expert, i am not a complete failure at it either. The thing that has me stumped though is this. Me and my mentor (who doesn't raise queens)took one of his hive with a queen, removed the queen and 3 frames into a nuc. we looked for any eggs or capped larva and there was non in the hive (and i do mean non we both looked), we thought this to be odd (thinking new mated queen or failing queen), but wasn't horribly concerned as it made things easier and we where kinda playing anyway.

We took a frame of day old larva from another hive and i did 30 cell punches as i have done with my own bees (though not 30 at a time) with some success. placed them in the brood chamber and checked them Monday the 7th. of 30 punches they had drawn out 28 which to me was awesome results, but we noticed they appeared to be tearing down some of the almost capped cells (sides appeared to be torn down), we where concerned, but really didnt know what to do about it and thought they might be tearing down some they thought where bad or excess, so re-assembled everything, checked them today May 10th, they have torn down every single cell not a single one left, well broke the brood boxes down thinking there was a queen possibly returned from a mating flight, but found no queen, nor any eggs or larva no nothing.

So does anyone have any ideas what went wrong.?

if you need more info please ask as this seems strange to me.

Cyric.


----------



## JMHoney (Jan 7, 2017)

The only thing I can think is laying worker. The lw lays eggs and the rest of the bees take them out. 
Or there is a virgin green in there. And she's hard to find when shes mates.

Good luck. Keep us posted


----------



## jbraun (Nov 13, 2013)

I had 4 splits that all had capped queen cells that were all torn down recently. I did my splits 4/8/17 and checked them last on 5/8/17 all queen cells gone. I'm in mid Missouri so not far from you. I'm assuming you had the same storms that we had. I'm guessing that's why mine tore their queen cells down. FWIW our club got our queens on 5/12/17 and I've seen complaints from numerous members who lost 1-10 queens on install. So I don't think it was only virgins we lost due to our weather.


----------



## Cyric30 (Mar 29, 2016)

JMHoney
Thank you for those suggestions, either are possible answers. But we took a Queen out of the hive? so is a laying worker possible in that situation.? and as to a Virgin queen, wouldn't the bees have killed the current queen before the virgin hatched.? i guess a lost virgin could have mated gotten lost and decided the hive was as good as she was going to get...again i do not know.....lust looking for ideas


----------



## Cyric30 (Mar 29, 2016)

Jbraun

We did indeed get the storming and flooding here, although we started the cells after the rain so that shouldn't have been a factor.


----------



## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Hungry bees will sometime tear down the QCs. Do you feed them--syrup, honey, and patty?


----------



## Cyric30 (Mar 29, 2016)

Beepro
i don't think thats it we are in our spring flow right now..... there was caped honey and nectar in the hive for sure.



beepro said:


> Hungry bees will sometime tear down the QCs. Do you feed them--syrup, honey, and patty?


----------



## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

A virgin in the colony is my guess.


----------



## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

Rogue virgin is my guess.



jbraun said:


> I had 4 splits that all had capped queen cells that were all torn down recently. I did my splits 4/8/17 and checked them last on 5/8/17 all queen cells gone.


Your queen cells should have been torn down. Once a queen hatches they tear down the cell.


----------

