Queen not laying

[RDMW]

Hello
I wondered if there was any advice about this?
Yesterday was the first warm day here in Ullapool so I was able to have a look in the hives. Two are doing well, loads of bees and stores and capped brood and lavas.
Number three looks very sad. Lots of stores but very few bees. I assumed that the queen had not made it through the winter, but to my surprise there she was walking around on a frame of empty cells. She was a new queen last year, and had been laying last year so must have mated. She was marked and looks just fine.
I moved a frame of honey to face onto the frame the queen was on and put a frame of capped brood from one of the other hives, hoping some newly hatched bees might boost the numbers and stimulate her maternal instincts!
Can I do anything else? I suspect this colony will die but don't understand why the queen is not laying.
Thanks

[Mellifera Crofter]

I don't know either, Richard, but I wondered whether she is a late-season queen? Perhaps that could have affected how she got mated.
Kitta

[RDMW]

Thanks Kitta
That may be right because I struggled with that colony last year and I don't think she mated till late June or early July. Maybe she has run out of eggs?

[SDM]

She'd be laying drones if she had run out of sperm, you could try giving them some 1:1 syrup with a contact feeder to stimulate some laying.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi RDMW
I think you have done the right thing just a matter of waiting to see what happens
The new bees from the sealed brood might get you to a point where there are some drones about and you will have more options

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[RDMW]

Thank you for all that. I will certainly feed them.
Drone ranger - plz could you elaborate on why having drones might help. Could the queen mate again?


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[The Drone Ranger]

Thank you for all that. I will certainly feed them.
Drone ranger - plz could you elaborate on why having drones might help. Could the queen mate again?


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alclosier is right RDMW

Your queen cant mate again

The next thing to try would be a frame of young larvae

Hopefully the bees will superceed your queen if she is no good

It takes 15 days to hatch and around 7 days before a new queen flies

But Drones have to be available to mate with and they take a lot longer to hatch and be sexually mature

So depending where you live there might be a while to wait before there are any drones available

You could buy a queen and replace her but the problem is the hive may well fail anyway

[fatshark]

DR ... Ullapool ... I don't know the area but suspect that sexually mature drones are likely to be in short supply for the next month at least.

"very few bees" in the original post ... probably not enough to keep the larvae warm and they're old, old bees ...

[The Drone Ranger]

DR ... Ullapool ... I don't know the area but suspect that sexually mature drones are likely to be in short supply for the next month at least.

"very few bees" in the original post ... probably not enough to keep the larvae warm and they're old, old bees ...

if the sealed brood hatches there might be a chance
If the queen didn't lay at all during Winter I think there wouldn't be any bees left at all
So possibly she might stagger on for a little while
As SDM says shes not a drone layer
I have spent lots of effort on weak colonies and it seldom works out
I take it you think its hopeless fatshark

[fatshark]

I take it you think its hopeless fatshark

I'm afraid so DR. Overwintering bees can last a long time - up to 9 months I think - so I don't necessarily think that a colony headed by a non-laying queen would have run out of bees by now. The amount of brood raised in the winter is generally pretty small, and if there's none sealed now she's not been laying for some time.

What's perhaps interesting is why she hasn't turned into a DLQ if she's poorly mated and run out of sperm?

I, too, have spent time and effort trying to save weak colonies (I may sound a heartless b**t**d but I'm not really) and have learned it's better to cut your losses. Taking brood from a colony developing well might save the colony ... but it might not and it's going to be ages to get a new queen mated. What it will do is weaken a colony at an important time in its development for this season. I'd prefer to have one colony bulging with bees (perhaps to break a nuc off later) than two weaker ones, one of which will probably be a basket case.