Hello, my first post here. I am returning to bee keeping after 30+ years and just installed a 3 lb bee package with queen into a hive, and ran into an odd situation that I have not heard described before.
The install happened yesterday. It went smoothly at the time, other than I did not get as many bees as I would have liked shaken out into the hive before closing it up. I thought I left maybe a cup or two of bees in the package. I left the screened package open and right by the hive, thinking the stragglers would find their way into the hive. Well they did not. At the end of the day yesterday there were a 2-3 cups of bees, in two clusters inside the package box. Overnight lows were too cold to leave then outside (25F or so), so I closed the box and took it into the garage overnight. This AM once it warmed up to flying temps, I moved the package back out to in front of the hive, but so far, no signs that these bees still in the package are moving to the hive. A few fly in and out of the package, but the cluster size has not changed much (the two package clusters merged into one overnight while in the garage).
Activity in the hive seems normal. There is good traffic in and out of the reduced entrance hive (still snow on the ground here, so not much nectar flow or pollen yet but soon), but I am feeding sugar syrup and a pollen sub patty in the hive, so they should be OK.
My big question is, what is going on with these bees in the package and what should I do about it?
A few possibilities I've thought of are:
A. The or a queen is somehow still in the package and that is why this cluster of bees won't leave. I did check and put the queen cage in the hive, but perhaps there was a second queen in there, or perhaps the queen got out of her cage (I am not that good and could have mistaken her in the cage, I just confirmed there was one bee in there).
However if this was the case, and there was no queen in the hive, I would have expected the hive bees to quickly abandon the hive and go back into the package with their queen. No? Perhaps a few bees have gone back to the package, but the package total is still about 3 cups of bees, no where near the total 3#.
If the only queen is in the package then I need to get her into the hive. Tomorrow, after 2 days, I was going to open the hive, check the queen cage and look for eggs/comb. If I don't see signs of a queen then perhaps this is it. Then the question is how to get the queen and this cluster into the hive and have them accepted. Can I just shake them in, or do I need to do something more like merging two hives?
B. If it's just some workers in the package, then I suppose I can leave them be or try to get them into the hive. Question becomes if adding all these bees at a later date more harmful then their absence?
C. Somehow there were two queens in my package, the one in the cage and one free with the workers (have heard this happens sometimes). If this is the case, then I don't want to introduce this second queen and her cluster to the hive, which already has a queen.
An additional piece of info which may be useful, the bees had started building comb in the package during transit. Not much, a few inches up against the feeder can. It was mostly destroyed as I took the feeder out. However I noticed that the remaining package bees have fixed up that comb and added a bit to it, although not many are on it. Just in case this says anything...
Seems like there are several possibilities of what may be going on, and probably more that I have not thought of. I will know a bit more tomorrow, when I open up the hive, but even then I am not sure it will be obvious what is going on. So I have a few questions about this:
1. Anyone have any good idea of what the situation here really is?
2. Given that I am essentially a beginner again (and wasn't that good at picking out the queen 30 years ago either), I probably cannot recognize if I really have a queen in the hive now. Any high probability ways of deducing this? Does the fact that most all of the bees have remained in the hive instead of returning to the package mean there's a queen in there?
3. If I should try to add these bees/queen to the hive, what is the best way to do so? I can wait for them to join voluntarily, but given our cold night temps they may not survive long enough. I could shake them out in front of the hive? I could pull the top cover and shake them into the empty top box (over the feeder and inner cover)? Something else?
Thoughts and opinions welcomed.
The install happened yesterday. It went smoothly at the time, other than I did not get as many bees as I would have liked shaken out into the hive before closing it up. I thought I left maybe a cup or two of bees in the package. I left the screened package open and right by the hive, thinking the stragglers would find their way into the hive. Well they did not. At the end of the day yesterday there were a 2-3 cups of bees, in two clusters inside the package box. Overnight lows were too cold to leave then outside (25F or so), so I closed the box and took it into the garage overnight. This AM once it warmed up to flying temps, I moved the package back out to in front of the hive, but so far, no signs that these bees still in the package are moving to the hive. A few fly in and out of the package, but the cluster size has not changed much (the two package clusters merged into one overnight while in the garage).
Activity in the hive seems normal. There is good traffic in and out of the reduced entrance hive (still snow on the ground here, so not much nectar flow or pollen yet but soon), but I am feeding sugar syrup and a pollen sub patty in the hive, so they should be OK.
My big question is, what is going on with these bees in the package and what should I do about it?
A few possibilities I've thought of are:
A. The or a queen is somehow still in the package and that is why this cluster of bees won't leave. I did check and put the queen cage in the hive, but perhaps there was a second queen in there, or perhaps the queen got out of her cage (I am not that good and could have mistaken her in the cage, I just confirmed there was one bee in there).
However if this was the case, and there was no queen in the hive, I would have expected the hive bees to quickly abandon the hive and go back into the package with their queen. No? Perhaps a few bees have gone back to the package, but the package total is still about 3 cups of bees, no where near the total 3#.
If the only queen is in the package then I need to get her into the hive. Tomorrow, after 2 days, I was going to open the hive, check the queen cage and look for eggs/comb. If I don't see signs of a queen then perhaps this is it. Then the question is how to get the queen and this cluster into the hive and have them accepted. Can I just shake them in, or do I need to do something more like merging two hives?
B. If it's just some workers in the package, then I suppose I can leave them be or try to get them into the hive. Question becomes if adding all these bees at a later date more harmful then their absence?
C. Somehow there were two queens in my package, the one in the cage and one free with the workers (have heard this happens sometimes). If this is the case, then I don't want to introduce this second queen and her cluster to the hive, which already has a queen.
An additional piece of info which may be useful, the bees had started building comb in the package during transit. Not much, a few inches up against the feeder can. It was mostly destroyed as I took the feeder out. However I noticed that the remaining package bees have fixed up that comb and added a bit to it, although not many are on it. Just in case this says anything...
Seems like there are several possibilities of what may be going on, and probably more that I have not thought of. I will know a bit more tomorrow, when I open up the hive, but even then I am not sure it will be obvious what is going on. So I have a few questions about this:
1. Anyone have any good idea of what the situation here really is?
2. Given that I am essentially a beginner again (and wasn't that good at picking out the queen 30 years ago either), I probably cannot recognize if I really have a queen in the hive now. Any high probability ways of deducing this? Does the fact that most all of the bees have remained in the hive instead of returning to the package mean there's a queen in there?
3. If I should try to add these bees/queen to the hive, what is the best way to do so? I can wait for them to join voluntarily, but given our cold night temps they may not survive long enough. I could shake them out in front of the hive? I could pull the top cover and shake them into the empty top box (over the feeder and inner cover)? Something else?
Thoughts and opinions welcomed.