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| I am in my first year of beekeeping, in an area without too many beekeepers, and the local club is 1 1/2 hours away. So, I am hoping to get some more good information here.
During a routine hive inspection, I saw a queen with no marking. Being in AHB territory, I requeened with another marked queen for worry of having an aggressive hive develop. Two months later, same deal. There is a queen, but not marked- attitude of the hive is fine. I requeened anyway. I don't mind requeening annually if necessary, but every few months seems a bit out of sorts. Do queens lose their marking fairly frequently? How concerned should I be, and when is it recommended I requeen if all seems ok? |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by marlingardener 8b (browns@rgf-tx.com) on Sat, Jan 9, 10 at 12:35
| Queens can lose their markings, but I don't think as frequently as you are finding. It may be that the original queen was weak and the girls just requeened. Was there any evidence of "supercedure cells"? Those are the queen cells near the top of the frame (swarm cells at the bottom). The queen you purchased may have been deemed a "bad queen" by the girls, and they superceeded again. I am told they sometimes will do this if disturbed quite a bit when they get a new queen. They blame her for the disturbance and get rid of her. With any luck the new virgin queen mated with drones from the hive and not AHB's. If the hive is gentle, healthy, and strong, I'd just leave them alone. The hive will get testy when they have no honey flow, nothing to do, or when they're all at home at dark. That's normal. If they start to get hot every time you come near them, then I would requeen. It will only take 42 days or so for the hive to clean itself of aggressive bees with a new queen. Hope this helps, Marlingardener's hubby |
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| Lots of breeders are breeding for hygenic(grooming) behavior to battle mites. Bees with lots of hygenic behavior will groom off that mark in no time. Also, if your bees had a queen that you didn't know about they would kill your new one... make sure they are queenless before you try to requeen. I ussually hang the corked cages for three days and then return to manually release the new queen. If they are feeding her then she is good to go, if they are trying to fight her through the mesh then something is wrong-ussually they are queenright already but sometimes just need another day. Once I requeen, I WALK AWAY FOR THREE WEEKS and sometimes more. There really isn't anything that you can do that will help them and just about anything you do will potentially hurt. |
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