HI everyone, I hope you all are remaining safe and healthy.
A weekend ago, I was using a technique I've been working with for the past year to increase the amount of hives in my apiaries by artificially creating a swarm impulse within one hive. The method is called OTS (On the Spot) queen rearing. Yesterday I returned to the hive to check on the development of queen cells in the queen less hive. To my surprise, there were none. Instead, I found eggs and three to five day old larva in the hive. Did I somehow place the queen in the wrong hive? I went to the donor hive and checked to see if it was now queen less. It wasn't. What I had encounter was a situation of where both mother and daughter queens were living together. When I split the hive, I separated the two queens and now both hives were producing brood. It's hard to tell if they both existed during the past winter or inclement weather recently had had delayed the mother from swarmed with half the colony. In either case, I'm lucky I caught it and hopefully I have reduced either hives impulse to swarm for now. I will need monitor both hives as the hive with the old queen will likely attempt to create superseder cells again. The experience reminds me of several things I have heard from the old time beekeepers. One being, the likelihood of two queens living in harmony in a hive is more common than then we think. Second, It always pays to assume there could be two queens in your hive, and that it's important to look closely for her or them when you plan to split a colony. And my advice. Check your hives every two weekend prior, during and the month after any nectar flow for queen cells. And also consider marking your queens.
Have a great day!
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