Guilfordbeekeepers.org

We had a great queen through the early part of the season, lots of brood production from about Feb. to late April. We started seeing queen cells in about late March, I presumed because we had not noticed how crowded our 2 deep supers of brood were becoming. We had 5 frames of brood in each deep super. We started cutting out queen cells and put on an other deep super. The hive population has continued to be robust, so I don't believe we lost a swarm. Brood started to diminish in April, but honey was definitely flowing in, so I did not think much about it. We have not seen ANY new brood for about 3-4 weeks, however. Gradually the capped brood emerged and now there is nothing. I thought I might have seen some eggs the last time we looked, a couple of days ago, but I could have been mistaken.

Do queens take a break from brood rearing during a honey flow? Or did we likely lose our queen somehow? Are we OK for now without a queen, or should we be trying to get a new queen to install asap? Tom and Janice Ward, Greensboro.

The hive gets ready to swarm by making queen cells and reducing the weight of the queen so she can fly.

Then they swarm.

If none of the queen cells emerge, the hive goes queenless and dies.

If the beek removes all the queen cells, guess what> He kills his hive.

If you missed a queen cell and it emerged, you may be fine. Otherwise, you need to find a queen ASAP. If it is queenless long enough to become laying worker, it is nearly impossible to save.

Got it. We should have started using this site sooner, or called someone, or tried harder to make one of the monthly meetings! Thanks, Wally.

We ordered a queen from Busy Bee in Chapel Hill last year to re-queen one of our two hives in about August, something we were told would help us go into winter with lots of bees. We removed the "old" queen (we had started with a package in May!) told to leave the caged queen in the hive, pull the cork out of the "candied" end of the cage and let the bees eat the candy and release the queen. We looked about a week later and the queen and workers she came with were dead and the candy barely touched. We went ahead then and let the hive raise a queen from the brood. The hibe never did recover, dwindling so badly we combined it with the other. Anyway, this time I am planning to leave the cage in the hive a couple of days and then pull the cork out of the other end and not rely on the 'eat the candy" method! Tom Ward.

There was something else in the works there. Queens have been left in cages in hives for a month and longer and was still alive and healthy. Some breeders "bank" queens for a month or more before selling them. The way you described is the correct way to introduce a queen.

You can safely check and release her on the third or fourth day if you want, but I would still remove the candy end cork the day she is installed, then release her if she's still in there on the third or fourth.

PS. There are links to two international forums on the front page. You can get access to many professional beeks through those forums.

I've got the list of approved sources of packages and queens, any suggestions for a source of a queen within reasonable driving distance of Greensboro? I may take another look in the hive tomorrow just see if I did see some eggs a couple of days ago. TW.

There is a list of breeders under the for sale forum here. Larry Tate is between High Point and Winston.