Laurence Edwards and Richard inspect a six-frame nuc with an expensive artificially inseminated queen that failed to lay properly. Four weeks in, the colony has only a tiny patch of sealed brood and excessive drone brood. They decide to cull the queen and redistribute the bees to stronger colonies as the season ends.
We spend a huge amount of money on very good quality breeder queens. We also buy a lot of artificially inseminated queens and bring them on and then select from them. In this video, I'm going to show you an artificially inseminated queen that has failed. Introduced about 4 weeks ago, big strong colony. We've put the queen in and she has not laid a single egg. Sometimes things don't go to plan. In this video, you're going to see a very expensive queen that has failed to lay. Before we open up, Richard, tell me about this nuc. How did you set it up? Like, what were your expectations for it and when were you first aware that there was something that was wrong.
So I set this nuc up as a 6-frame nuc, strong enough so as it didn't have to do any work because it is a very expensive queen. Inspection at probably about 10 days revealed a supersedure cell, which I've cut out, and since then there has been no eggs. It might prove a different story when we open the box, you can never tell.
Famous last words, wouldn't it? Hopefully, hopefully we go in and it is absolutely full, but It's worth saying at that point, like, artificially inseminated queens, you expect to see supersedure cells. So that's not a case of, oh, the queen is a dud because there's a supersedure cell. Often you do that with colonies. You put queens in, they try to raise supersedure cells, and it's not really an issue. You take them down and they get over it quite quickly. They do that every single time with an artificially inseminated queen.
It's what I can't get over with this colony though. It looks perfect. You know, like I said, I've fed it, I've done everything. It is weird, and they're still carrying in pollen now, Lawrence.
Yeah, so it's looking like a really good nuc. Like, you'd go into that, wouldn't you, and you'd think, wow, that's a lovely looking nuc. So definitely not short of bees, not short of stores. We've got pollen going in the front as well. See Richard's favourite long hive tool there. Why do you use the long hive tool, Richard?
Because it's the best one on the market.
Where'd you get it from? I've not seen them in many places.
Thorns.
From Thorns. Okay, so definitely not short on any stores. Wow, look at that. I bet that's a heavy frame.
Yeah, it'd be about 6 pounds in weight. But there's stores, capped stores, and then there's open stores. We're well fed.
I love watching Richard opening up the frames. He's so sequential and take your time on every frame, don't you? Not like me with my big sausage fingers, like squishing bees.
But no smoker either.
No smoker as well. No, nice calm bees.
In this we have a patch which she laid of sealed brood, which is literally that big. And then there is just absolutely tonnes of pollen.
So yeah, you can see that there, a piddly little patch of brood that she's laid.
And it is, it is worker brood. So she was correct. I should have put my glasses on. Do you know something? She has laid a little bit more.
Okay, so she's laid a little bit more there as well.
She's there, look.
But not that much. Right, let's get this frame out. So just pulling this frame out here as well, you can see here, that's not looking good, is it? What do you think this bit is here, Richard?
That's drone.
Definitely drone, isn't it? So there's something wrong with this queen. Got the small patches of worker brood, but now she's going into drone brood. Might find a supersedure cell somewhere else, but she's definitely no good. What do you think we should do with this colony?
The colony?
Yeah. So what would you do with this now? You've got your zero.
Well, it's at the end of the season, so there isn't much to do other than kill the queen, shake the bees out, and that's it, really.
Seems a shame, doesn't it? I completely understand the reasoning behind it. Just kind of almost want to say, come on, queen, get going. Got high hopes for this queen, haven't we?
We have, yeah. Really? Yeah. And a lovely lot of bees to introduce too. Gutting, isn't it?
So, yeah, really frustrating. We sent off a few virgins to be artificially inseminated. So this isn't a breeder queen that we bought. It's a little bit of an experiment. One of them died before it got sent to us, and another one never took at all. And then this one here, you can see it started to lay some eggs, but clearly not looking good. A little bit of drone brood there, a couple of sporadic patches of really small amounts of worker brood. But there's something up with that queen. She is no good. So unfortunately, it's game over for this colony, and it is game over for this queen. So it's really strange. The bees are doing their very best to look after this queen. The colony looks in a healthy position, lots of bees, lots of stores, but no brood, no decent brood anyway. This queen here is a goner and we're going to have to shake it out and let the bees enter into all of the other colonies.
