Disappearing queens and absconding bees

[Aimee Williams]

both if my top-bar hives came through the winter with very good numbers... then one swarmed three times before I could remove the swarm cells. The remaining bees absconded 4 days later. The other looked really good last week with a queen and brood, but when I looked today all the brood is hatched and there are no eggs or queen. So now I need a new queen and no one seems to have any. Does anyone know where I can get one locally?

[Micaela Seidel]

OK where are you. or email me directly [e-mail] ...thanks

[Aimee Williams]

Sorry I did not get your message until Saturday. I do still need a queen, but it sounds like all of yours are either gone or hatched.

[Micaela Seidel]

Aimee...I have a similar situation...so I will be watching to see who has a queen. Jefferson, I will be checking my hive again on Tuesday and if you still have queen cells available I may be interested!. Thanks for letting me butt in on your discussion!

[Tom Byrd]

Hi Aimee- 

I have two top bar nucs available with about 8 bars of comb and brood each if that would be helpful. Also, we had a similiar situation with one of our hives this year. We initially thought we had no queen since we could not see her after looking through the hive twice on weeks 2 and 3 after the swarm episode. However, after 6 weeks we now have larvae and brood so there is clearly a queen. We are newbie bee keepers so we are not very good queen spotters ( obviously) .  However, it did take a full 6 weeks to get to visible larvae stage. 

If you are interested in the nucs, give me a call at 263-1832

[Ben Noyce]

If you still need one, I've got a virgin queen just emerged plus one still capped ready to emerge tomorrow. 

[e-mail] or 301-7749

Ben