# Help does anybody have a queen they can sell me



## farmgirl6 (May 20, 2011)

Help! second hive has has two queen failures, now it appears a third, last week checked and the queen was there but no eggs or brood, now can't find queen, still not eggs or brood, and they seem to be building up one of the cells to a queen cell but don't think they have time! really need to buy a fertile queen if at all possible! can anybody help??


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## TxGypsy (Nov 23, 2006)

The chances of someone having a queen for sale at this time of the year are slim. Even if they did it would have to be within driving distance as it is too cold to ship queens at this time of the year. 

If you are unable to locate a queen, first make absolutely sure you are queenless and that the queen hasn't just quit laying because the hive is getting ready for winter. If you are positive that you have a queenless hive the best thing that you can do at this time of the year is to combine it with a queen right hive. Remove and freeze all empty frames. Don't just add space to the queen right hive, add assets like capped brood and frames of honey and pollen. If you add them into the queen right hive be sure you do so keeping in mind the brood nest pattern. Don't stick a frame of honey into the middle of the brood nest, but over to the side or above the brood nest. You can either use the newspaper combine method or place a piece of screen wire over the top of the queen right hive and set the queenless hive on top. Remove the wire after a couple of days.

If you have several queen right hives you can do a shake out of the queenless hives. Take the frames off to the side and shake all the bees off them. Get all of the bees out of the queenless hive and then remove the hive completely. The bees will mostly find new homes in the other hives. Be sure and freeze all of the frames.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

Have the bees thrown out the drones yet? In my area (Kansas) it would probably be too late in the year, but I do not know where you are located at.

If a new queen fails, you might try combining the 2 hives. One Fall I combined 2 tiny hives by putting one hive on top of the other with a sheet of newspaper between them, and they combined without a problem. There was a queen in each tiny hive, but I do not remember if I ended up with a 2 queen hive or not. At any rate I had nothing to lose, as I did not think either hive was large enough to winter over.


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## planzman (Feb 28, 2012)

H&R apiaries in Jessup Ga has them
May not be too cold yet down south.


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## TxGypsy (Nov 23, 2006)

Strangely enough I have ended up with a few queens for sale. I had a remote apiary that I haven't been to in a while and as frequently happens one of the hives has been robbing the others and I don't want to try and build the hives back up for the winter, so I decided to combine hives are sell off the queens. These are mid to late summer queens from this year. 

Where do you live? I'll be traveling from southern Missouri to northeast Texas this weekend.


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