How long to wait before buying a queen for a broodless colony?
I checked my colonies today and both are lacking brood and queens. I'd split one from the other three weeks ago. The source hive was thriving and had plenty of queen cups and brood. This is the first I've bothered them in three weeks to give time for the queens to emerge, duke it out, and mate. I am worried that if I wait any longer, I'll lose both colonies.
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First we have a terminology problem. Queen cups are void of eggs or larva. Queen cells are cups with egg or larva or pupa. So I assume you took the two best capped queen cells to make your split? The queen cells are fragile up to about day 10 when they are pulled to make mating nucs. Once the virgin queen emerges it can take 2 weeks plus or minus 5 days to start laying eggs. The virgin queen has to build up its strength, do it orientation flights and then it is ready to make mating flights. Not all queens make it back to the hive. She could get eaten by a bird, pesticides, or a storm.
So the key is to bee patient and look for eggs really hard. Then if you find eggs, find the queen and mark her. It will make your beekeeping much easier. As for why the mother hive is queenless? Did she get pinched accidently? Were there any supercedure cells or emergency queen cells? look for eggs again? If the hive is loud and grumpy it may be queenless. You have about 3 weeks from the time you are broodless to the time a laying worker hive develops. Laying workers are a pain to correct. If you have open brood frames you could add them to the hive for the bees to build a new queen. Or you can purchase a mated queen ( if it's not a laying worker hive). I hope that helps?
Phil🐝