Requeening a Strong Hive

Doug Shaw got two queens from the Wally-Wayne colony. This is a strain of queens that survived the onslaught of mite infestations a decade ago and has some very desirable qualities. He convinced me that the queen in the hive at Clarence's has probably seen her better days -- she's been there a year and a half. So we went requeening yesterday after work.

There were a couple of challenges. First, we couldn't find the old queen. We searched through every brood frame and couldn't see her. Then we dumped every brood frame's bees onto the ground and didn't see any clusters. The super above the brood frame was full of honey (good for the winter) and so we left those frames alone. We installed the queen in her cage anyway.

Here are my after the fact thoughts. First, either one queen will kill the other and the hive will have a new queen or an old queen. The new queen is marked; the old queen isn't. If the new queen survives, I'm not sure how she will get inseminated. It's a bit late in the year for drones to be floating around. We saw very few in the hives we visited. I just hope some mating ritual can take place.

Other than that, the hive looked strong. There were a lot of hive beetles. There is sufficient honey for them to make it through the winter. We will check in a week or so and find out.