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pcrock

Weak queen?

pcrock
18 years ago

This is only my second summer of beekeeping and I noticed a problem with one of my hives. However, I can't seem to find out what's wrong from the couple of books I have.

About three months ago my first hive swarmed. My husband and I were able to catch the swarm and relocate them to a new hive. That hive is doing well.

I did a quick check on the old hive about a month after the swarm and saw larvae, so I assumed that hive was ok as well. However, over the past couple of weeks I've been seeing less and less activity to and from the old hive.

Yesterday I opened it up to have a good look. What I found was a reasonably healthy looking hive (no sign of foulbrood, no obvious mite damage on the bees, etc.) but with very, very few larvae in a random pattern throughout the hive. Just about all the remaining frames of the two deep supers had honey (they haven't put any in the shallow supers). There are almost no bees coming and going from the hive. I suspect I have a problem with the queen and am planning to requeen asap. Does this seem reasonable? What would cause the bees to stop foraging?

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