ARE MY BEES QUEENLESS | IS MY COLONY QUEENLESS

Is your colony of bees queenless? This page will help you identify if you have a mated queen bee in your beehive.

Without a mated queen in your beehive, your bees will perish, unless they have the resources to make themselves a new queen, using the emergency response. The process below shows you how to test if your bees have a queen.

WHERE IS MY QUEEN?

ARE MY BEES QUEENLESS?

IS THERE A QUEEN IN MY BEEHIVE?

1. FIND QUEEN

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.

2. ADD FRAME OF EGGS

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.

3. IDENTIFY CELLS

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.

4. ADD CAGED QUEEN

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.

5. REMOVE FONDANT TAB

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.

6. CHECK FOR EGGS

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.

ARE MY BEES QUEENLESS?

IS THERE A QUEEN IN MY BEEHIVE?

1. FIND QUEEN

2. ADD FRAME OF EGGS

3. IDENTIFY CELLS

4. ADD CAGED QUEEN

5. REMOVE FONDANT TAB

6. CHECK FOR EGGS

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