Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Hey everyone, got a potential problem. Picked up and installed package from Brush Mt on March 23. Waited till March 30 to check on queen. She was released but no eggs(I did notice that the workers filled the one precious drawn comb I provided w/nectar). Just checked again this afternoon and 4/5 frames were drawn out and full of nectar. No eggs present(2 weeks after install) And prob most importantly there are 4 supercedure Q cells that have been started but empty ofcourse. My question is should I wait her out longer? Put in a frame of fresh eggs from my other older hive? Order a new queen or take a chance of letting them make there own?Thanks in advance for your input.

Brian. Trinity, NC

My take on it is that there is a bigger queen problem than being nectar bound. You should be seeing eggs by now. I would go ahead and put a frame of eggs with the nurse bees on it into your package hive. Be sure not to move your good queen. This will keep the package from going laying worker and will boost your package with replacement bees.

If you are going to have the package make a new queen, go ahead and bite the bullet and pinch the package queen. The bees will sense their queenlessness in a couple of hours and will use the newly hatched larvae from the frame of eggs you put in the package hive to make into a queen or queens.

If you are going to call around to the Georgia or other queen producers and have a queen mailed to you, start on that immediately, and the eggs from your good hive in the package will buy you time.

Has anyone else dealt with this situation in a different way?

First, call Brushy and tell Steve what happened. TALK TO STEVE, NO ONE ELSE. Then either buy a queen, put in a frame of eggs, or both. But DO IT NOW.