Hello everybody,

I'm experiencing some problems with one of my hives.
The queen was observed to be laying more than one egg
per cell, sometimes up to four.

I'll just give a little background of what might have
transpired resulting to this behavior. The hive
started on a three-frame nuc and was constantly being
fed 1:1 sugar syrup up until they have drawn out the
seven additional frames. During this time several
queen cups were noticed and were destroyed every time.

At this time the honey flow was due to start so
feeding was stopped. But due to bad weather the bees
weren't able to go out and take advantage of the flow,
so their reserves were depleted. I could not say what
happened really because my work requires me to be away
for 4 weeks. I just have somebody to look at the hives
when I'm away, instructing to destroy every queen cup
seen, inspections were done every week (7) days.

Now, when I inspected the hives upon my arrival there
was a noticeable decrease in population, I would have
expected by now a hive bursting with bees. The
population was down to 7 frames with irregular sealed
brood pattern. Only one or two frames with eggs, the
rest with sealed brood with honey stores building up.

My questions are:

1. Is this a new queen? I don't really know if all the
queen cup/cells were taken out.
2. If it is not a new queen then maybe the queen was
injured during one of the inspections? Could injury
cause this behavior?
3. Would  starvation cause this behavior as well?

Any book would say to requeen but we don't have a
regular queen breeder wherein you could just buy right
away. Most of the few apiaries here make their own
queen, only if there is a surplus they will offer
their queens. I have no choice but to keep this one
and hope for the better.

I would greatly appreciate any comments/suggestions,
Thank you.

Wishing you all a problem free and bountiful crop this
season.

Neon
Beekeeper (sometimes) from the Philippines


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