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First thing to do is LOOK FOR YOUR QUEEN. It helps if she is marked when the colony is small. If you cannot see the queen, then look for capped worker brood and eggs. If you see capped worker brood and eggs, don't worry about finding the queen. She is there and all is fine with the colony. Close them up and leave.
If you cant find her, take a look at this video to help track her down - FIND A QUEEN.
1. FIND QUEEN
Day 0: If you cant find the queen and the colony has no eggs or capped worker brood, there may be an issue. First thing to do is to establish if the bees have swarmed recently. If they have, leave for 3-4 weeks to see if they can get one of the virgins from the swarming process mated. If they haven't swarmed, add a single frame of eggs into the middle of the brood nest and then leave the colony alone for 8 days to test the emergency response.
2. ADD FRAME OF EGGS
Day 8: After 8 days, take your marked frame of eggs and see if they have started to create emergency queen cells (see above). If they have started to create cells then your colony is hopelessly queenless. You now have 2 options. Option 1: Remove all cells except one and leave it to open mate.
Option 2 (recommended): Remove ALL emergency cells and continue process below.
3. IDENTIFY CELLS
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Day 8: Immediately after destroying ALL the emergency cells, the colony is now hopelessly queenless. They have no queen and no resources (eggs or larvae) to create one.
Add a mated queen, in a sealed queen cage and place between two frames of brood. Do not remove the tab covering the fondant.
4. ADD CAGED QUEEN
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Day 10: Leave the sealed cage in between the brood frames for 48 hrs. This allows the bees to get used to the smell of their new queen.
After 48 hrs, you can remove the plastic tab to expose the fondant. Place the cage back between the frames of brood and the bees will slowly release the queen.
5. REMOVE FONDANT TAB
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Day 17: After 1 week, we go back and check for eggs to see if the queen has been successfully introduced. If you see eggs, then there is no need to see the queen.
If you dont see eggs, try and locate the queen. It can take 2-3 weeks for mated queens to come back into lay following being caged.
6. CHECK FOR EGGS
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I found a colony of bees that I suspect is queenless. I followed the 6 key steps above to identify and confirm if the colony of bees had a queen inside. This is a really important process as unless you can identify if the colony of bees is queenless, it means you are unable to fix the problem by adding a new queen.
Is there are queen in my beehive? Find out below.
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