# HELP!!!!! MY queen is DEAD!!!!! :( :( :(



## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

HELLLLLLLLPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!

Today is a very odd 60f degree day in December, and I went out to the hive and bees were out and about as expected.
As usual, there were about a dozen dead workers lying about on the ground- they seem to either get old or chilled regularly. I assume this is natural, and they look healthy otherwise- no mites or deformed wings.

But this morning I found THE QUEEN lying dead outside the hive on the ground!!!!! :beg: :beg: 
Here is a picture to confirm:









WHAT DOES IT MEAN???????????? Should I be devastated???? 
What should I do??? 

Except for today, temps are now in the 20-30s at night and 30s-40s daytime highs....too cold to go hive opening and inspecting anymore. Drones are nowhere to be found- I'm sure they got kicked out long ago.

Please help me understand and calm down!!!! I'm pretty shaken up....they all seemed so healthy and happy!  AAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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## TwT (Aug 5, 2004)

How do you know this hive didn't have a supercedure queen in the fall and you actually had a 2 queen hive for the past few months and thats just the old queen that finally died? shoot I dont know but when I could inspect the hive I would look for another queen and if the didn't have one I would combine it with another hive using the news paper method. maybe someone else has more on this. I never look at my hives until spring


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## NDnewbeek (Jul 4, 2008)

At this point, I don't know where you would get another queen.

I would just pull for TWT's observation. If possible, do a quick inspection to look for the queen (go FULL protection - they will be VERY defensive). 

You might put the queenless hive over a queenright hive and separate them with a double screen. If the queenless hive actually has a queen, both hives could persist queenright in that configuration and you could separate them in the spring.

If the hive is actually queenless, the pheromones from the queenright hive should keep the cluster until spring when you can get a queen. 

Alternately, the only other thing that I can think of is to assume the worst and pre-emptively combine with a good colony. You will have a better chance at saving the bees, have one REALLY strong hive and, you can split them in the spring when queens are available again.


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

>60f degree day in December, and I went out to the hive and bees were out and about as expected . . .
The "out and about" bees "could" be robbers.


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

I only have the one hive....it was my first hive, a gift that we moved to my house on Halloween. The person who gave it to me had only the one hive, for about 4 years it was totally healthy on its own. 

This dead queen was freshly dead- plump and flexible, not stiff and dried up.

Could a hive have two queens for a while?? I thought a new queen would immediately kill the old queen?? :s


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

Often, much more than we thing, two queens are present, mother (old) and new daughter. Is is possible the colony supercedured back in good weather.


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## Ravenseye (Apr 2, 2006)

It's not at all uncommon for two queens to be present for a while. Here's one of my hives from a few years ago...mother and daughter, side by side.

http://www.ravenseye.net/2_queens.jpg


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## SwedeBee1970 (Oct 26, 2008)

A 40 degree day is OK for taking a quick peek. Open it up & look. If the bees are missing, then possibly CCD ? The redish discoloration in the abdomen gives me this feeling. Some queens last several years, others only a year or less. There is probably more tendency to clean house on warmer days. Above all, RELAX ! If the recruits are there and are in their cluster they have a good chance to make it into Spring to produce another queen. The cluster may even mean that there is a queen.


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## brac (Sep 30, 2009)

also if there are any eggs or very young larva, they will make a new one, I would think it won't be a great queen, but you could change her in the spring.


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

Thank you all for helping me!

I've calmed down a bit.

First- SwedeBee- this queen looks exactly as she did when we saw her 5 weeks ago, before the move....her abdomen was a beautiful reddish mahogany color back then too when she was healthy and alive. She appears not to have changed.

Bees seemed to be coming and going normally from the hive today for a 60F day, with no apparent battles going on.
Last time I opened the top and looked in was Thanksgiving day and all looked well then, with lots of activity and honey.

I called Sam Comfort today- who went through the hive frame by frame with me back around Halloween before we moved it together. It all looked good back then and we found at least the one queen (who looked exactly like this dead one). And then, 26 days after we moved the hive to my house, I found one white worker larva tossed out the door, just getting its gray eyes. That told me there was still some fertile egg laying happening after the move (since the max from egg to hatchling is about 24 days)...so the queen made it past the move and kept laying.
Sam said this dead queen was pretty unusual in December.
Between that discussion and the forum advice I've been getting, I decided not to open the hive and go through it until Spring. The reason is, as some of you stated, that basically there is nothing I can do either way to fix anything...or even to know for certain what the situation actually is.

I mean, if I look through the whole 2 deep hive and *don't* find a queen- that could mean either there is no queen OR that I simply didn't see her.
If I look through the hive and _do_ see a queen...then either all is well OR it's a new virgin queen and since there are no drones around anymore there's no telling how or if she will fare over the winter at all. So just seeing a queen wouldn't necessarily solve all my problems either.

Either way, there's nothing I can do now but wait until Spring and then go see if there's Trouble in River City.

My biggest goal with this hive was to continue this particular gene pool of extremely gentle acclimatized bees that had done well for years with no treatments to speak of. For that i am counting on a new queen daughter from the old dead queen.  
I will just have to wait through the whole winter now, not knowing what to expect in the Spring.

When i think of the odds against my even having seen her majesty there on the ground amongst the other usual brave dead and debris tossed about....I could _so easily_ have overlooked her and not noticed at all!

Thanks for your support and interesting different thoughts on it.

i feel pretty bad as you can imagine, but i am going with the hopeful idea that a new queen was there and mated already before the move and before the drones were gone, and we just didn't see her, and that this was the old queen who was allowed to die off naturally. Since my bees are so gentle, perhaps they were kindly enough to allow the old queen to hang around in her dotage. I'll hang on to that optimistic thought through the winter. 

There will still be a few 45F degree days where I can just take off the top briefly to make sure there is normal bee activity inside, without disturbing frames. At least I will see if the hive has been abandoned or something.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

This thread reminds me what I don't miss about living where Winters are colder. Yesterday I started another small batch of queen cells (seven). In a few more weeks I'll have another batch of new queens. There are still many drones around, but nowhere near as many as during Summer. Due to the lower amount of drones I think that some of the queens I raise during Winter may be inferior to those I raise in Spring and Summer.

I'm afraid that, even if your hive has the brood to raise a replacement queen, that you may not have enough drones or warm enough daytime temperatures to have her properly mated.


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## SwedeBee1970 (Oct 26, 2008)

Maybe the picture exposure is off a bit. It's hard to focus all 4 of my eyes these days.

A queen is not necessary to lay a queen egg, nor do I know if she even can lay a queen cell. No doubt, if the colony is and appears healthy, a worker bee will step up and lay a queen egg near spring for their harvest days ahead. 

Just keep the questions coming and your prayers will be answered.


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## G3farms (Jun 13, 2009)

SwedeBee1970 said:


> A queen is not necessary to lay a queen egg, nor do I know if she even can lay a queen cell. No doubt, if the colony is and appears healthy, a worker bee will step up and lay a queen egg near spring for their harvest days ahead.


Do what :scratch:??

G3


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

Joseph Clemens said:


> I'm afraid that, even if your hive has the brood to raise a replacement queen, that you may not have enough drones or warm enough daytime temperatures to have her properly mated.


Indeed...there are NO drones around for over a month now. Quite a few nights below freezing and dipping into the 20's nowadays.
My hope is that a new queen was produced over a month ago when there WERE drones and she mated then....and that the old queen hung around for a month before dying.

I just have to have faith that this hive knows what's it's doing.


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## waynesgarden (Jan 3, 2009)

SwedeBee1970 said:


> A queen is not necessary to lay a queen egg, nor do I know if she even can lay a queen cell. No doubt, if the colony is and appears healthy, a worker bee will step up and lay a queen egg near spring for their harvest days ahead.


I think the odds are better that Santa will bring a new one than that a laying worker will produce a new queen near spring. Unlikely Omie is raising Cape Honey Bees. According to my reading, it is reported to happen but very rarely, in other species of bees.

Wayne


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Omie said:


> I just have to have faith that this hive knows what's it's doing.


More times than not, they do. When in doubt, hands off and let the bees figure it out.


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## Bens-Bees (Sep 18, 2008)

What Omie doesn't know is that this is a prank being played by a neighbor or someone else that knows bees, ordered a queen, killed her and left her for Omie to find in front of the hive... :lpf:

Sorry, just trying to make light of it since more than likely there's nothing Omie can do about it until spring anyway.


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

G3farms said:


> Do what :scratch:??
> 
> G3


G3 and I would like to here more.


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## brac (Sep 30, 2009)

I guess I wasn't thinking veryfar ahead when I said they would make a new one.

Dave and G3, see this thread for info on Parthenogensis. (worker/queen eeg from a worker)
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=235869


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

A slight update....
Today is 48F and sunny and calm....so I figured I'd just pop the hood to see if the gang is in fact all still there, to make sure the dry sugar was not blocking any traffic routes or ventilation, and to observe their general mood over losing a queen.
First this morning I watched them for a while coming and going from the hive.
There were several workers washboarding the upper entrance, and workers were coming and going from both top and bottom entrances.
I saw a couple coming in with small amounts of pollen on their legs. I also saw a couple of dead workers get hauled out of the hive and dumped a few feet away. there were a few leaving with tiny balls of dry sugar in their mouths, obviously having decided to get rid of some of the mountain camp sugar I had put in the top. Or maybe those were sugar crumbs that had fallen down in the combs and didn't belong there. Everything seemed normal.

I puffed some very light smoke about and then removed the outer and inner lids...

The 10 lbs of mountain camp method sugar was nicely positioned and there were plenty of big pathways around it for the bees to go where they pleased around the top area there. It had formed a nice crust where I had sprayed it with water after laying it on the damp newspaper back on Thanksgiving day when it was 60F. 

Everyone was there in the hive, moving busily around on the frames on this nice sunny day. 
They were in a seemingly good mood... active and focused on their work. Nobody was irritable or came after me. I put the covers back on to leave them to their business. After today the weather will get colder again, certainly too cold to look under the covers.

At least now I can say there was no CCD at work here, right?


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

Hmmm....just wondering...you don't think the traumatic vibrations/banging of my staple gun could have killed the queen when I put tarpaper around the hive the day before yesterday, do you? I used about 50 staples total all around the 4 sides so the wind wouldn't pull it loose or get under the edges. Yikes what an awful thought.


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## SwedeBee1970 (Oct 26, 2008)

Normal is GOOD


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## devdog108 (May 7, 2009)

I cant speak to a whole lot, but let me assure you that if you open my hive right now, you would be lit up like the tree in my front yard. Normal is good as Swede said, but, I would/could have thought they would be more aggressive this time of year. Mine CERTAINLY are as well as my dads!!! Oh, and your queen looks a LOT like my MH queen.


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

*What is an "MH" queen?* :s

Well, my bees are acting just like they did 2 months ago when we first opened them up. Definitely not lethargic, just very busy bustling around in there doing their bee thing and pretty much ignoring me when I go in. It is a lot colder here than in Georgia right now, maybe that has a bearing? 

Actually, the only time I've seen them get anything approaching riled up was on Thanksgiving Day, when my daughter (the entomologist/bee expert) started puffing way more smoke at the open hive top than I ever do. I asked her to go easy on the smoker but she said 'don't worry, Mama'. ...then I heard this roaring buzz start up from the hive and lots of bees started crawling up looking not happy at all. She then really worked the smoker and they had to admit defeat and retreat inside to get away from the smoke. I never use nearly that much smoke and the bees treat me nice. The smoke was bothering my throat so I don't blame the bees at all for getting their tiny knickers all bunched up in a knot over it. Of course I have no way of knowing if they might have done that anyway that day, smoke or not. But it was interesting about the smoke, possibly a connection to their starting to get mad?


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## devdog108 (May 7, 2009)

Minessota Hygenic queen....


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## BeeAware (Mar 24, 2007)

If you saw pollen coming in, that is a positive sign. Queenless bees usually collect no pollen since broodrearing is not possible. I'll bet you have a queen!


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

Ooooh, now I can go to bed tonight with a new little ray of hope!
THANK YOU FOR THIS!! :banana: 
It was just little balls of pollen on the legs of two workers....but pollen nonetheless. 
Is this really true?- and would they all know already after two days if there is no queen?


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## BeeAware (Mar 24, 2007)

Research indicates that bees lose all memory of their former queen after only 24 hours! Of course, they may collect pollen as long as they have unsealed brood, but queenless/broodless bees have no stimulus to collect pollen. I actually use this as a test for queenrightness in the spring. If a colony does not take their pollen patty while other nearby colonies are, I generally find the reason to be queenlessness. Queenless colonies also have a different sound than queenright ones, making a roaring sound instead of the usual hum.
Also, queenless colonies appear disorganized and confused. I'm betting that you have a supercedure queen in residence. I hope so.


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## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

SwedeBee1970 said:


> Snip
> 
> A queen is not necessary to lay a queen egg, nor do I know if she even can lay a queen cell. No doubt, if the colony is and appears healthy, a worker bee will step up and lay a queen egg near spring for their harvest days ahead.
> 
> Just keep the questions coming and your prayers will be answered.


 
SwedeBee1970,

If this wasn't a typo, could you explain this phenomenon...

a worker bee will step up and lay a queen egg near spring :scratch:

x
x
x


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## devdog108 (May 7, 2009)

It is not clearly understood what prompts a honey bee queen to lay an unfertilized egg versus a fertilized egg. The size of the brood cell may influence the queen's behavior. Honey bee eggs hatch regardless of whether they are fertilized. Drones develop only from unfertilized eggs. Unfertilized eggs are haploid in origin, which means that they contain only 16 chromosomes from their mother. Honey bees are a haplo-diploid species, in which drones have haploid cells and workers and queens have diploid cells. The drones that develop, therefore, share a very similar genetic makeup to their mother. The Haplodiploid sex-determination system is a system that some Hymenopterans (bees, ants, and wasps), and coleopterans (bark beetles) use to determine the sex of their offspring, and preserve eusociality. ... Image File history File links Question_book-3. ... Queen bee with attendants on a honeycomb. ... Haploid (meaning simple in Greek) cells have only one copy of each chromosome. ... A scheme of a condensed (metaphase) chromosome. ... Ploidy is the number of homologous sets of chromosomes in a biological cell. ... 


All chromosomes contain hereditary units called genes. The specific place on a chromosome where particular genes are found is called a locus. All the forms of a gene that might occur at a locus of a chromosome are called alleles. Drones carry only one type of allele because they are haploid (containing only one set of chromosomes from the mother); thus, they are also called hemizygous. For other uses, see Gene (disambiguation). ... Short and long arms Chromosome. ... An allele (pronounced , ) (from the Greek Î±Î»Î»Î·Î»Î¿Ï‚, meaning each other) is one member of a pair or series of different forms of a gene. ... It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page. ... 


During the queen's egg developing process, a diploid cell with 32 chromosomes divides to generate haploid cells called gametes with 16 chromosomes. This division process is also called meiosis. The word "meiosis" comes from the Greek meioun, meaning "to make smaller," since it results in a reduction in chromosome number. The result is a haploid egg, with chromosomes having a new combination of alleles at the various loci. This process is also called arrhenotokous parthenogenesis or simply arrhenotoky. For the figure of speech, see meiosis (figure of speech). ... 


There is much debate in the scientific literature about the dynamics and apparent benefit of the combined forms of reproduction in honey bees and other social insects. The drones have two reproductive functions. They convert and extend the queen's single unfertilized egg into about 10 million genetically identical male sperm cells. Secondly, they serve as a vehicle to mate with a new queen to fertilize her eggs. Female worker bees develop from fertilized eggs and are diploid in origin, which means that the sperm from a father provides a second set of 16 chromosomes for a total of 32 - one set from each parent. Since all the sperm cells produced by a particular drone are genetically identical, sisters are more closely related than full sisters of other animals where the sperm is not genetically identical. A worker bee is a female honeybee which performs certain tasks in support of a bee hive. ... Diploid (meaning double in Greek) cells have two copies (homologs) of each chromosome (both sex- and non-sex determining chromosomes), usually one from the mother and one from the father. ... A spermatozoon or spermatozoan ( spermatozoa), from the ancient Greek ÏƒÏ€Î*Ï�Î¼Î± (seed) and (living being) and more commonly known as a sperm cell, is the haploid cell that is the male gamete. ... 


A laying worker bee will exclusively produce unfertilized eggs, which develop into drones. As an exception to this rule, laying worker bees in some sub-species of honey bees may also produce diploid (and therefore female) fertile offspring in a process called thelytoky. In thelytoky the second set of chromosomes comes not from sperm, but from one of the three polar bodies during anaphase II of meiosis. A laying worker bee is a worker bee that lays unfertilized eggs usually in the absence of a queen bee. ... The asexual production of female workers or queens by laying worker bees Category: ‪Beekeeping‬ ... Polar body is a cell structure found inside an ovum. ... 


In honey bees, the genetics of offspring can best be controlled by artificially inseminating a queen with drones collected from a single hive, where the drones' mother is known. In the natural mating process, a queen mates with multiple drones, which may not come from the same hive. Therefore, in the natural mating process, batches of female offspring will have fathers of different genetic origin.


Id like to see it happen....mine died this year because they could not do what you say....


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

Did you write all that yourself?


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## Beeslave (Feb 6, 2009)

Viewing your pic in the OP it looks like that queen was a virgin.


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## waynesgarden (Jan 3, 2009)

devdog108 said:


> ....laying worker bees in some sub-species of honey bees may also produce diploid (and therefore female) fertile offspring in a process called thelytoky.


Something almost no one will see happen their lifetimes unless you raise one of those sub-species such as the Cape Bee which is found in South Africa, not in Columbia County, NY.

Telling someone not to worry, that "No doubt, if the colony is and appears healthy, a worker bee will step up and lay a queen egg near spring" is simply wrong advice. He might as well have said "No doubt, if you wish real hard, the Easter Bunny will bring you a new queen in the spring."

Some answers here sound like they're spoken with authority but are sometimes a newbie's mangled misperception of something he's read. Always get a second opinion.

Wayne


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

A laying worker bee will exclusively produce unfertilized eggs, which develop into drones. As an exception to this rule, laying worker bees *in some sub-species of honey bees* may also produce diploid (and therefore female) fertile offspring in a process called thelytoky. In thelytoky the second set of chromosomes comes not from sperm, but from one of the three polar bodies during anaphase II of meiosis. A laying worker bee is a worker bee that lays unfertilized eggs usually in the absence of a queen bee. ... The asexual production of female workers or queens by laying worker bees Category: ‪Beekeeping‬ ... Polar body is a cell structure found inside an ovum. ...

If I'm not mistaken this doesn't include honey bees that we beekeepers keep.
I think there was one small African species of honey bee that could do this.


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## devdog108 (May 7, 2009)

no way i didnt write that...did a lot of reading to get to that point if that gives me any credit...LOL


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

Beeslave said:


> Viewing your pic in the OP it looks like that queen was a virgin.


Now that's interesting. So that would not have been the old queen then. And when the photographed queen died, there had certainly been no drones around for over 6 or 8 weeks already.

I did get a chance to look in the top briefly during a 45F sunny calm day in mid december, and things did not look so good. 
The mountain camp sugar on newspaper was a bit damp (not sopping wet though) with a big handful of dead wet bees next to it at the back side of the hive, on top. I pulled off the sugar and newspaper (which was somewhat stiff and easy to do) and there was a slight patina of light greyish mold under the paper on top of the frames- not gobs of mold, just a sheen of it on the tops only of the top frames. I had brought fresh paper and 5 lbs sugar and quickly put that on and closed up again. Tossed the old sugar&paper in the compost heap.
The problem was that when I was peeking down into the frames there was no sign of life or sound down there at all, even when I gave the hive a couple of thumps. There were a few dead bees clinging to the top areas of the frames that I could see.

I had heard a buzz inside the hive with my ear to it a week after finding that queen dead, but nothing since then.
I'm afraid I've lost them all.  But I'm not dismissing any miraculous re-appearance in the Spring. I just have to wait it out. Won't be seeing any flying weather for a few weeks now I'm sure...we're just coming into the coldest 8 weeks now of winter. Single digit temps, teens, twenties, an occasional dip into 30's, and 9" of snow at the moment.


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## Countryboy (Feb 15, 2009)

_Telling someone not to worry, that "No doubt, if the colony is and appears healthy, a worker bee will step up and lay a queen egg near spring" is simply wrong advice. He might as well have said "No doubt, if you wish real hard, the Easter Bunny will bring you a new queen in the spring."_

You might be more honest telling them they have a better chance that one of their worker bees will steal a fertilized egg from a nearby hive, bring it back to the hive and raise a queen from it.

I don't think that happens very often though. (But I give it higher odds than thelytoky.)


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

Beeslave said:


> Viewing your pic in the OP it looks like that queen was a virgin.


Do you say that because she still had lots of 'baby fuzz' on her thorax?


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## Bens-Bees (Sep 18, 2008)

waynesgarden said:


> Always get a second opinion.


It's hard not to get a second, third, and fourth opinion when you're asking beekeepers.


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## Lady Devana (Oct 5, 2016)

Hi everyone,Scraped dead bees out from my 3 hives today. I found a dead queen in one of them. Here is my dilemma. 
My friend thinking he was helping scraped dead bees out from my green hive before I could check the dead bees from the yellow hive. So not absolutely sure which hive the dead queen came from. There were not many dead bees in the yellow hive but many in the green. I believe the dead queen came from the green hive but am not sure. That is one of the problems. I could try and join the green hive with the yellow but the yellow has two deeps and the green has 3 deeps. I don't have a flir 1 and suspect the bees are between the second and 3rd deep in the green hive. Many are on top in the yellow. Not sure what to do. I would appreciate as much advice as I can get on this. I really want to try and save my hive. Thanks all.


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