Queen worries...

[gavin]

Are you in a Varroa area? If so, and if you have a virgin due to come into lay soon, the bees will raise worker brood from the eggs that you put in. That gives you a great opportunity to knock Varroa back by taking out and destroying the brood once sealed. The mites will be desperate to breed and dive into the first patch of brood to be sealed, and your piece of comb with eggs will give you a readily detached piece a few days ahead of the rest.

If Trog lets you of course. I think she'd only let you do that with drones! One day you may have Mull beekeepers stopping by to learn these tricks ....

[SueBee]

So far varroa-free... touch wood, fingers crossed, etc
But will bear this in mind should situation arise!

[Beejud]

Sue bee just to add to the other comments, don't be too quick to write off the hatched queen. I have had the same situation in previous years and just at the point of despair when you think all is lost the queen starts laying. The books say 2-3 weeks but they don't read the same books as us. So many variables, the weather is causing havoc for all of us this year.

[SueBee]

Just been for an inspection, no sign of any new eggs (even with my new super magnifying glass - Maplins about £4). However, most of the brood on the comb I inserted has been capped, and they are raising queen cells. 2 have larvae in, quite close to new chunk of comb, so I am hopeful.
Will update when I see the first eggs, or even just a queen!

[Jon]

Sue
If they are making queen cells on the comb you have inserted then you almost certainly don't have a queen.
If they use a larva under 24 hours old a queen will hatch in 12 days and could then take another 3 weeks to mate.
The problem is that there may not be many bees left in 5 weeks - although bees not involved in brood rearing do live longer than the oft quoted 6 weeks.

[SueBee]

I'm trying not to panic about them dying off, just hoping for good weather for the next few weeks.

[SueBee]

Had to go away for a while, so not much chance to check on the wee darlin's and how/when queen hatched. Today after a lot of good weather, thought I'd check on how the eggs/brood were coming along. NONE! No sign of egg or brood. I guess the queen cell never came to anything.
I still have 4 frames of bees and they look fairly lively, I think it might be time to give up trying to raise one and introduce another queen - where do I start finding one?
Any advice welcome, as there seem to be many dodgy breeders that you folks won't touch...

[gavin]

Hi Sue

1 day old eggs on 31 May means your new Q cells should have hatched virgins around 15th June. We are now a month passed that so you *might* still have a queen waiting for the right time to lay but probably not. Did you see any sign of a hatched queen cell?

Have the bees made an area of polished cells in the centre with pollen in an area around it? If so, you can still hope that a queen is waiting. If not ...

If you are in Phil's area he is the man that might know who could help. If you are north of Oban you could try Kate Atchley on here too. I'm not aware of any commercial supplier that can guarantee Varroa-free bees or even that breed stock from the Amm types which will dominate your area.

Good luck!

Gavin

[SueBee]

No sign of hatched queen cell, or polished cells. Pollen and honey stores are minimal. I've emailed Phil for advice, but thought I'd throw it out on the forum as well. My bees were originally from sw of inverness, are they still likely to be Amm types? All this breeding stuff boggles my mind!

[gavin]

Not likely to be Amm from there. I heard that they are breeding from Carniolans, unless anyone wants to correct me? They will certainly also have Varroa but so do Phil's and others around Oban.