# hives split - queen vendor not coming through - what to do now?



## timsch (Apr 2, 2016)

I knocked down a couple of very hot hives ten days ago, retaining three nucs from the hives. I had spoken to a queen vendor locally about getting some queens prior to the split and it seemed pretty well set. Well, we've not been able to get queens from him to this point, and I'm wanting to keep these three nucs with 4 frames of brood each and tons of nurse bees from becoming laying worker hives. 

I knocked down the only two hives I had, so I don't have frames of additional new brood to keep giving them. There is still some remaining unemerged brood in the nucs. Is this sufficient to keep the workers from laying? I didn't see any worker-laid eggs in my inspection last night. I did see a few queen cells on the brood, which I removed (I don't want queens descended from the prior hot queens). 

I do, however, have multiple recently hived swarms from the bait hives I put out. Most of these swarms are only 1/4 - 1/3 the size of the nucs but the queens are laying pretty well in a couple of them, with a nice brood pattern over 1 - 1-1/2 frames . Would a newspaper combine work with this ratio, or would the swarms be overwhelmed? 

The queen vendor may come through in the next day or two, but I need a backup plan.


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## Tweeter (Apr 19, 2017)

Since your recently split nucs have tons of nurse bees, why not take some eggs from the swarms and put them in the nucs, If the queens come through in the next couple of days they won't rear a queen. If they don't then you most likely will have queens raised from the eggs of a strong swarm queen. They will need plenty of pollen and nectar resources as well. Hope this helps.


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## devil dog (Jul 1, 2014)

Send an email to [email protected]. I just got some queens from him last week. I have bought queens from him for a few years. Very reasonable and good to deal with and has always had queens when I needed them. If I wasn't happy with his queens I wouldn't be a repeat customer.


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## garyprunty (Apr 15, 2014)

Why not leave the queen cells until you have another queen?


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## timsch (Apr 2, 2016)

Tweeter said:


> Since your recently split nucs have tons of nurse bees, why not take some eggs from the swarms and put them in the nucs, If the queens come through in the next couple of days they won't rear a queen. If they don't then you most likely will have queens raised from the eggs of a strong swarm queen. They will need plenty of pollen and nectar resources as well. Hope this helps.


I don't have the skills to transfer eggs / graft / etc., and I can't afford to take the whole frame of new brood from the swarm hive.


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## Billboard (Dec 28, 2014)

Dont wait for vendor call and order a queen. How much time you gunna give him?


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

timsch said:


> I don't have the skills to transfer eggs / graft / etc., and I can't afford to take the whole frame of new brood from the swarm hive.


Take a frame of eggs replace the frame with drawn comb will set you back exactly 1 day if you can't afford that, you got bigger problems than you realize


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## jooky (Mar 18, 2016)

pull a frame of eggs out, cut a length out and smoosh it to the underside of a frame.. queen cells done


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