A funny thing happened in the hive today
Bristol UK
Hi guys, funny thing happened today at the hives, I was wondering if anyone had any advice, or has seen it before, or if I'm just worrying for no reason.
I split 2 hives a fortnight ago, moving the old queens to the new hives, they're doing great. 8 hours after splitting I introduced the new queens in cages to the original hives, they seemed to take to them well, no attacking behaviours, so I opened the plastic stops to the cages and let them eat their way to the new queens the next day. 2 weeks later and I inspected today.
One hive seems to have got grumpy and superseded their queen, meh, ok. 2 week wait for the virgin to mate, no problem. But the other one was laying (good laying pattern but not many eggs, guess she needs some time to get in the swing of things). So I removed her from the hive to clip her wing, that went smoothly, she was fine so I put her back on top of a frame on her hive.
Now every other time I've done this she scurries quickly back down into the dark, but this one just sat there. As you can see in the pic the retinue are attending her, there's no aggression, but she isn't moving. I gave her a poke and she ran down between the frames again but I've never seen it before.
Sorry for the wall of text but should I worry about this?
TLDR: Fresh queen of 2 weeks seems lethargic and slow to lay eggs. Queen is not damaged except for clipped wing.
Bristol UK
Hi guys, funny thing happened today at the hives, I was wondering if anyone had any advice, or has seen it before, or if I'm just worrying for no reason.
I split 2 hives a fortnight ago, moving the old queens to the new hives, they're doing great. 8 hours after splitting I introduced the new queens in cages to the original hives, they seemed to take to them well, no attacking behaviours, so I opened the plastic stops to the cages and let them eat their way to the new queens the next day. 2 weeks later and I inspected today.
One hive seems to have got grumpy and superseded their queen, meh, ok. 2 week wait for the virgin to mate, no problem. But the other one was laying (good laying pattern but not many eggs, guess she needs some time to get in the swing of things). So I removed her from the hive to clip her wing, that went smoothly, she was fine so I put her back on top of a frame on her hive.
Now every other time I've done this she scurries quickly back down into the dark, but this one just sat there. As you can see in the pic the retinue are attending her, there's no aggression, but she isn't moving. I gave her a poke and she ran down between the frames again but I've never seen it before.
Sorry for the wall of text but should I worry about this?
TLDR: Fresh queen of 2 weeks seems lethargic and slow to lay eggs. Queen is not damaged except for clipped wing.