Bees can only survive about 3 weeks without a queen. If they are unsuccessful in raising a new queen on the first try, they will be in very severe danger of dying. After about 3 weeks without a queen a hive will begin producing laying workers See: Laying Worker. Laying workers can only produce drones- which are useless to the hive. Hopefully, when you discover your hive is queenless it will have been less than two weeks. What to do… There are several different clues that will

Finding queen cells in your hive can be very confusing. In this article I am going to break down how to identify what caused your ladies to raise a cell and what to do. There are four reasons a hive will produce queen cells. The hive is going to swarm (swarm cell) The hive is going to replace it queen (supersedure cell). The hive lost its queen. the hive just feels like raising queen cells... The Hive is going to swarm (swarm cell) Swarming is the bees natural way of reproduc

Queen rearing is a great way to increase your hives and can be combined with Varroa control. Raising queens introduces a brood break into the cycle of a hive. During this brood break a mite treatment can be used to kill almost all of the mites. I like to use Oxalic acid as it kills on contact and is natural and inexpensive. You do not have to be a sideliner beekeeper to raise queens. A few hives will suffice. You can raise up to 100 queens off of 1 hive. Raising queens is one

Finding a queen can be very difficult, especially in a full hive. It's like playing Where's Waldo in real time! When I first became a beekeeper, I did not find the queen until my second year! Now, that is not a problem :) but even with years of experience she can sometimes still escape my eye! There are only a few cases in which you actually need to find the queen or locate the queen. > You are requeening > Splitting > Combining 2 hives There is no secret formula to find her,