Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Interesting day yesterday. Rob and I installed 2 packages with success (couldn't have done it without him!). After the installation, I happened to look down and lo and behold there was another marked queen on the outside of the empty package! After a short debate, we decided to place her in front of the entrance reducer and with a little encouragement she went in. Shortly after, I began to second guess on weather I had accidentally released one of the queens. Considering she was located on the outside of the package, the chance of a queen escaping a queen cage, traversing 10000+ bees, and flying to the outside of a package box were highly unlikely. Either way, I was concerned one hive had 2 queens, or worst case, no queens.

About an hour later we decided to go back in to ease our curiosity. We confirmed 2 caged queens and a floater. In the hive that contained 2 queens, Rob pointed out the demeanor of the bees around the queen cage. They were aggressive and difficult to move. They were certainly in an attack mode. We removed the caged queen and donated her to the greater good.

The head beekeeper at Brushy Mtn confirmed today that this is very rare to have 2 queens in 1 package. Each bee supplier is different, but for the most part, they mark all queens. Most likely they shook her in without knowing they did so. He agreed that we did the right thing by removing the caged queen, otherwise mother nature would have removed her for us.

One of the greatest things about beekeeping is there will always be surprises. It never gets old. After nearly 40 years, I still see things for the first time quite often.

She has a new home in the observation hive with a frame of bees and brood from one of my hives. If things look good around Monday, I will consider a direct release if the bees have not released her and if the bees on the front of the cage appear to be trying to feed her and not trying to kill her. I have to give credit to for Wally suggestions along the way during this adventure--including re-populating the observation hive.

Thanks for sharing this information. I, for one, am very grateful for the wealth of experience and knowledge we have as members of the GCBA.

The drama continues. I did a direct release of the queen on Sunday. As best they could in limited space, the bees balled her and I watched what appeared to be a struggle all day long. Occasionally, a worker bee would drop to the bottom of the observation hive and die. About 20 bees went this way. Monday morning I saw that the bees were normally spaced and I looked for a dead queen at the bottom of the hive since it had been too cool for them to have removed her. I did not see one, and instead, saw a small unmarked queen being properly tended to. My best guess is that the bees protecting this queen also removed the green paint from her thorax.

She made her public debut last night at a garden club meeting in Oak Ridge. This morning I watched her back into a cell and saw where she had deposited a single egg before moving on. Things are looking up.

How's she doing now?

I followed Wally's suggestion about adding another frame of bees to the observation hive. Yesterday I pulled 3 frames of brood and nurse bees from a very strong hive in Brown Summit. I put them in a nuc and let them stay there until David and I finished our bee work. Once home, I put one frame in the club's package hive and one frame in another of my hives and will check Saturday to see if either of those hives is drawing queen cells.

I took the last frame out and walked around for awhile in my yard to give any bees that wanted to fly a chance to leave the frame. The idea in all of the delay was to give any foragers that happened to be on the frame time to fly off.

David and I then opened the observation hive and added that frame just above the brood frame with the queen. There was no fighting, and in a few minutes, the queen was going back to laying eggs. This morning she was up on the newly introduced frame. All appears well as of now.

I did re-mark the queen after her debut performance and she has stayed marked. She is still a small queen, but is doing a fine job of brooding up the observation hive. I took out 1 medium of brood about a month ago and gave it to another hive. I placed an undrawn medium frame in the observation hive. It is now completely drawn and brooded up. Wally suggested I leave a medium frame where the deep goes to let the bees build drone comb from the bottom of the frame. To my surprise, the comb is drawn, is mostly worker brood size, and has been filled. I'm going to have to remove another frame and replace it with open, drawn comb to control the population.

royl got the right queen for beekeeping purposes, and I got the right queen for an observation hive. The queen I got was never a prolific layer and I had to supplement the observation hive with nurse bees and brood a couple of times. This queen would never have been good in a full sized hive, but made management of the observation hive much easier. Unfortunately, this queen and her very small cluster were a deadout at the first very cold night we had earlier this season. This was despite the fact that they were on my partially heated enclosed back porch.

I do have potential replacement candidates in mind if they survive into spring.