Hello List
I have a problem with one of my colonies. In October, after having received
winter feeding I checked all my colonies and found at one a queencell. This is
propably to late in the year to get a queen well mated and also the brood was
running out in the next 3 or 4 weeks. I normaly mark all my queens, but this one
was the only one in this year were I never saw the queen. I thougt this is no
problem, if I saw eggs. But now we are in winter and the bees have no brood
until february. I dont know if they have the old queen or have a new but likely
not mated queen.
If the old queen is no more in the colony I would like to requeen. One method
would be to wait until they start breeding in February and if I see that they
are drone breeding, I can exchange the hive with a weak, but queenright hive and
let then fly in. But maybee it is not the best solution to wait until they are
dronebreeding.
 
My question to the list is: Is there any method to check if a broodless hive has
a queen, and further if this queen is mated?
 
Kind regards   Wolfgang
 
Hobby beekeeper in south Germany
homepage in german and english:
http://home.t-online.de/home/wolfgang.poehlmann/imkerei.htm