Hi Pete,

you wrote;

> But if the colony is weak because the queen is no good, why bother? PLB<


How can I determine if I have a bad queen?

I understand that you can evaluate her during the season and then determine if she meets the criteria one sets for their queens, but what if she was doing well until November? 

In mid November I was helping a friend set up his hives for winter. We got to one where it dwindled to ~2 frames of bees from a honey producing colony earlier in the season. There were signs of brood stress but not something that directly pointed to varroa issues. As far as I know, the colony was never checked for mite counts and was treated but I don't know when and with what. We found the queen with a handful of bees in one part of the hive and the majority of bees in another part. We decided to shake bees out and combine them with other colonies and were about to drop the queen in alcohol when we got a call about someone needing a queen. The caller's colony was queenless ( likely because he killed the queen earlier during inspection/feeding ), so we gave him the queen. When I talked to him in very late December, he said that he believes the queen was accepted and laid brood as he was convinced there were more bees than he remembered in November. My point is that a queen we thought was doing bad and was about to get dropped in alcohol seems to be carrying a different colony through the winter. I know that it doesn't mean that the colony won't decide to supersede her in the spring, or that once all the bees are hers, the colony will continue to perform well, I'm just wondering how can a backyard beekeeper like myself determine when the colony's shortcomings are the fault of the queen? More pondering than wondering actually....


Marcin

Chicago




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