Replacement Queen Day

Sadly sometimes, queens for some reason disappear from their hives. This could be because, she died, was failing, accidentally got rolled by the beekeeper inspecting the hive, pests caused problems or she was chased from the hive.

However it happened to me this time, I needed to replace my queen in one of my 9 hives. First I tried to give the colony a frame of brood from egg to capped. I did this so that the colony could try and raise their own emergency queen. It looked like they were successful, I saw emergency cells created, capped and then torn down. This means the virgin queen emerged took out her competition and then should mate (this can happen before or after she culls the other queens) come back and lay eggs.

My virgin queen was still not in the colony and I couldn’t find any eggs or brood. This means my queen either got taken out (eaten by a bird most likely), or got lost when coming back from a mating flight. Getting lost does happen when you have multiple colonies right next to each other as I do. They get confused and fly into the wrong hive. This is bad for the new queen because the existing colony will recognize her as a threat and ball her (take her out).

So, I ordered a replacement and she arrived today for me to put in the hive. When you order a queen she comes mated already and most times marked. This way, you’re not waiting for her to mate and hope she makes it back, she can just get to work.

While working my day job, I have her sitting right next to me in her queen cage with her 5 attending worker bees. She began pipping an hour after I brought her in the house from the UPS driver. Pipping, is a noise that queens make to call out checking for other queens when they emerge from their queen cells. It can also be a sign of eagerness to be in a colony surrounded by workers and start laying eggs again.

I recorded this and am sharing it here: