Cut Out Some Queen Cells, Queens Hatching All Over The Place

[Jen]

Geez Louise! What a crazy last couple of days. The weather has taken a warm turn. So I get into all 7 of my nucs. I have sold 3 other nucs.

1 of the nucs swarmed yesterday, so I split today. Both of those nucs now have queen cells ready to hatch any minute, I could hear the queen piping. During that split I carefully cut out several queen cells and set them aside in case I wanted to use them in week nucs.

Nuc 1 - no queen, multiple eggs in the cells
Nuc 2 - no queen, pretty pathetic
Nuc 3 - swarmed. eggs, lar, cap brood, will check back in a couple weeks for queen cells
Nuc 4 - swarmed. queen cells present, will check back in 14 days for laying queen
Nuc 5 - no queen, multiple eggs in cells

So, I get the nucs back together and start to make a plan. Then! I'm cleaning up my table and 2 of the queen cells I cut out have hatched and the queens are hanging out on the wonky comb, they are in no hurry. So I snap them up into queen clips and set them aside for safe keeping. Then! I make a bathroom run, and while washing my hands another queen drops off of my shoulder onto the sink.

So now I have 3 virgin queens in queen clips. And I put the last queen cell into a queen clip as well, so maybe there will be a 4th virgins soon.

Can I use these virgin queens in my nucs?
How do I introduce them? They have no pheromone yet
Do I dare to put them into the nucs that have multiple eggs in the cells? The bees have created their own pheromone by now...
 

[tedh]

Hey Jen!  When you say "multiple eggs in cells" do you mean 2 or 3?  Or more like 5 or 6?  Are they on the bottom of cells or stuck to the sides?  I ask because last year we had one hive requeen itself, and when she started laying I was seeing 1, 2,or 3 eggs per cell (they were all on the bottom of the cells).  I was thinking laying worker, but after a couple weeks she got straightened out and laying quite well.  The first time I saw her was this spring.  She's made up one of our better hives!  Apparently it may take them awhile to get the hang of it.  Multiple eggs, many on the sides of cells as their abdomen isn't long enough to reach the bottom, is a, I hesitate to say this, SURE sign of laying workers.  Good luck, Ted

[Jen]

Oh Ted! Now I remember this same issue a couple of years ago, and I came to the forum. I would say that there were no more than three eggs in 'some' of the cells, some cells had two, and some cells only had one. And, they were on the bottom of the cell.

Hmm, maybe I should leave these two nucs alone for a while...

In the meantime, I have this bucket of cut out comb, that I put the queen catchers with the virgin queens in, I put them amongst the comb thinking that they would feel more familiar with the scent of comb.

[CBT]

Hope you get the queens with some nurse bees soon.

[Jen]

CBT, This is weird! If you buy a mated queen, she has attendants with her. You put the cage in the hive for introducing for 3-4 days.

But these are virgins, they have no pheromone. So how do I intro them into the hive? should I put them into queen cages with some girls? Will they kill her in there?

Or, should I just lift the lid and put a virgin in a nuc, close the lid and hope she goes on a mating flight?

[Green bee]

Jen can you cage them and try to introduce after a few days in a queenless hive. I would think it would need to be a hive that don't have the eggs / larva that they need to raise there own queen. You may even have to release her yourself. Just my thought I have absolutely no experience with this situation. But I hope it works out for ya.

[LazyBkpr]

They still have pheromones, just not strong ones yet. If I had a hive I suspected had no queen, I might cage them and put them ion on the top bars fro a cpouple days, then turn them loose if the otehr bees look like they are nto being aggressive...
   Multiple eggs per cell can also be a new queen trying to figure things out. They usually settle down after a few days.  Look for eggs on the walls of the cells rather than just in the bottom. The wall will tell you quickly if it is a new queen or a laying worker.
   Laying workers will often lay multiple eggs per cell as well, like six or more. Two or three might make me wait and see if it is a new queen.
   Hope you are doing well Jen!

[Jen]

Scott! Hiya! You always seem to pop up when I need your wisdom the most. I was thinking of caging them and getting them back into a hive environment, I hope they are still alive in the morning.

Gbee - The same advice 

CBT -  I see the reasoning behind getting some nurse bees in with her, not sure how to do that tho. Thinking... I can get the queens into cages.. but how to get nurses in... hmmm... or get nurse bees in first then send the queen in. Very Patient Work There

Ted, you have lent me so much good advice, and I know why

[CBT]

I wear nitril (exam / painting ) gloves and sneak up on the little fuzzy bees from behind and grab just below the wing and out of stinger range and put them in the wood queen cage backwards because you have to keep a finger over the hole or they will all come out. Queen goes in head first. May want to do a few test runs.

[Jen]

CBT - the virgins perished before morning. Shucks! I was wanting to give this a try. Thanks for helping me tho. I don't think any queen does well alone.

[tedh]

Sorry to hear this Jen.  On a positivr note: I learn a good deal from my mistakes/failures where as the things I get right, or my successes, are always open to the possibility of blind luck.  I've always thought I should write a book titled "Things That Don't Work But Sound Good".  Ted

[rober]

 the three most common cages are:
1-wood block with 3 concentric holes bored. hole in both ends. with these cages the screen is a press fit in a groove. if you carefully lift the screen from one end without bending it you can put worker attendants & queen in & press the screen back into the groove. if you kink the screen you can hold it down with rubber bands.
2-wooden cage with black plastic tube in one end. the tube will slide out so you do not have to push the bees thru as long of a tunnel. you can put the candy in the tube in advance & shove it back in after the bees are in. I use mini-marshmallows. they work great.
3-are the plastic type & they are the easiest to use as they snap open making very easy to install the bees.
I have an issue now where a shipment of queens did not arrive overnight as it was supposed to. these queens will arrive in a 4"x5"x6" 'battery' box which has screens at both ends. had they arrived yesterday I would be finished installing the queens since I had all of my nucs made up & ready for them. now I have 2-3 days of  thunderstorms to deal with. i'll put a queen excluder on top of a hive, put an empty super on top of that, put the battery box in, & close it up. if I get a long enough break from the storms I might try installing some but even if it's not raining if the barometric pressure is still in a storm mode the girls can get reaaaallllly cranky!!

[Jen]

TED ~ "Sorry to hear this Jen.  On a positivr note: I learn a good deal from my mistakes/failures where as the things I get right, or my successes, are always open to the possibility of blind luck.  I've always thought I should write a book titled "Things That Don't Work But Sound Good".  Ted"

   Ted, so enjoy your presence, you have just the right way of making an experiment gone bad... not seem quite so...

    I thought I had the perfect solution with three queens, and ironically I have three nucs to queen. But I tried queen experiments before  and they just don't seem to work. But I simply can't kill a queen either...

    ROBER - Wishing you the best of luck buddy. Queening is precarious.

[tedh]

Back atcha girl!

[Lburou]

CBT - the virgins perished before morning. Shucks! I was wanting to give this a try. Thanks for helping me tho. I don't think any queen does well alone.

Did you feed the virgin queens Jen?

The easiest way to get workers in the queen cage is with a queen pipe if you don't want to handle them directly. 

I'm wondering what you plan to do with those queenless NUCs now?  They will all go laying worker soon without a queen.

[LazyBkpr]

CBT - the virgins perished before morning. Shucks! I was wanting to give this a try. Thanks for helping me tho. I don't think any queen does well alone.

Did you feed the virgin queens Jen?

[/quote

  I was going to ask if you gave them a drop of syrup to eat too.

[Jen]

Ya know Lee, I am so inexperienced with this queen thing... which makes me want to learn more.

So how do I go about feeding a queen?

I don't mind handling any bee... worker, queen, drone.

Queen pipe? Is that an instrument from which you smoke something?..... kidding 

But seriously, do you mean getting the queen to pipe when she's in the cage? How would I accomplish that?

Inspected the nucs last week, made some notes. In the process right not of inspecting them again this week. First nuc came up with a laying queen that I didn't see before Another has a virgin queen mating this week. Another has a queen ready to hatch any minute. There are 3 more that are iffy, no laying workers yet, if that's still the case this week. I may break those down, empty the bees on the lawn, reclaim the equipment that I need right now.

[Green bee]

I think this is what Lburou is talking about.

[LazyBkpr]

If you have nucs with no queen why wouldnt you put one of those cells into those nucs BEFORE they hatch?  If they emerge in the nuc those bees will accept that virgin queen.

[Jen]

Hi Scott, that's what Apis taught me to do last year. That was my plan. I cut the queen cells out carefully, set them aside in the shade. Finished a couple more nucs. Made a note of which nucs needed a queen cell. When I went back to the queen cells to start installing them, they had all hatched out and were hanging out on the wonky comb I had cut off, they were in no hurry. So I gathered them up, one in her own queen clip until I got to the forum for what to do next. I didn't get my answers until night. In the morning they had perished :(