Any ideas?

[Silvbee]

Hi all,

Looking for some advice. At the first inspection of the year last month I noticed one hive had lost its queen and so merged it with another hive with a laying queen but was quite weak. Everything went well and the two colonies were united by the 23rd April. I went into the hive again yesterday after 2 weeks and saw the queen, lots of sealed brood and polished cells but no eggs. It seems the queen hasnt laid anything for a fortnight. I put in a frame of eggs from another hive and will check them next week but any ideas as to what could have happened? There wasn't any worker comb converted into drone so I don't think she's a drone layer, just stopped laying.

Cheers in advance

[Jon]

Could there have been a non laying queen in the hive you thought had lost its queen. If so, the laying queen in the small colony could have been killed. Just guessing as the queen in the small colony may have been marked so you know it is still that one.
The other possibility is that with poor weather the queen has just taken a bit of a break - but 2 weeks with no eggs laid at this time of year would be very unusual.

[Silvbee]

Thought that could be a possibility Jon. Went through the non laying hive a couple of times and was sure she was gone but looks like that wasnt the case. No good at laying eggs but good at killing queens!

[Jon]

Some scrub queens are not much bigger than workers and are very hard to spot. It's not that one queen kills the other, rather the workers associated with one queen will kill the other. That might not be what happened but could certainly explain what you are seeing.

[gavin]

The other possibiity is that the colony is far from prosperous - poor foraging or maybe even robbing leading to a paucity of resources. In that case the off-lay queen will also be smaller than one in full lay. Try feeding in case that helps.

[Silvbee]

Cheers guys. I'll see what the frame of eggs shows and give them a good feed.

[Silvbee]

Hi all,
Quick update. Went into the hive yesterday and there was some evidence of eggs but very few. Supercedure cells were also present so looks like the girls have had the same idea as me and are re queening. Removed the old queen and will let them get on with it.

[Adam]

A few years ago I had a queen that just stopped laying; I though she has disappeared and after a while she started again bus disappeared soon after for good. So she's not right - it's good that she laid enough eggs to be superceded. Problem is that now you have removed the queen the colony will put up emergency cells so you will need to ensure that they are removed to keep the desired queencell.

[Silvbee]

The queen cells looked about 5 days old. Can I not just leave them to emerge and destroy the other queen cells? Little chance of them throwing a cast on a supersedure right?

[Jon]

I nipped a queen on Sunday which has been laying just a few eggs per day for about a month. The brood is worker brood rather than drone but there is obviously some problem as the hive has plenty of foragers and plenty of stores. Some queens can be damaged by nosema.

[Floyd]

Last year I had a queen that firstly started to spread the broad over the frames missing some out completely and then she stopped laying.

Rather than knocking her on the head. I performed a shook swarm on fresh foundation and she restarted with earnest.

She is my best queen this year, having outlaid the other Three hives.

[alancooper]

Hi all,
Went into the hive yesterday and there was some evidence of eggs but very few. Supercedure cells were also present.

The "books" say that Queen cells can be described by their function, as swarm Q cells, supercedure Q cells and emergency Q cells - but how confident should we be in identifying function based, for example, on structure (size and shape), location (frame edge bottom or middle), seasonality (early, mid or late)? As a novice I found it difficult to decide and I still would not like to give betting odds on making the right decision.

[nemphlar]

If you have queen cells in season you can be pretty sure they're swarming, mine usually wait till they've dumped the drones around September to try supercedure