"Now, on the day when the queens are supposed to hatch, i take the cells
out. By shining a flashlight through the cell, i can clearly see
there is not a good queen in there. The cell will contain one of three
things:
-A small undeveloped bee, maybe a worker bee, still white with purple eyes
-A small fully developed, but dead, bee
-A black mess on the bottom of the cell (rare)"

Is the brood box you have transferred the bees to queenless?  It should be!
(One can produce queen cells in a queen right colony, but beginners should
not try.)

I suspect it is queenless, although Mats did not say.  I suspect that there
are not enough bees in the colony and the larvae are not being fed properly.

A very successful queen breeder I know wants 5 kg. of bees in his cell
building colonies!  That is a lot of bees.  Moreover, these bees should be
obtained by shaking from the brood nest on a warm, sunny day when most of
the field bees are out foraging.  (It is likely that the beekeeper will have
to shake from several hives, to get 5 kg. of bees.)  In this manner, most of
the bees for the brood hive will be nurse bees so (1) they are 'primed' to
feed larvae and (2) they are far less likely to drift back to the hive they
were shaken from.

The shaken bees should then be put in the brood hive overnight before
installing the cell bar with the queen cups.  They will know they are
queenless and will literally run to start feeding the queen cells.  If you
can, establish the brood box at least 4 kilometers away from the hives you
shook the bees from.  If you cannot do this, expect to find that in the
morning about 50% of the bees you shook have gone back to their hives!

I think this will solve your problems.  Good luck.


Lloyd
Lloyd Spear, Owner Ross Rounds, Inc.
Manufacturers of Ross Rounds Comb
Honey Equipment, Sundance Pollen Traps
and Custom Printer of Sundance Labels.

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