Large larvae in bee hive - Ask Extension
Hello,While inspecting our beehive, we found some really large larvae. We were scraping the extra wax etc off of one of the frames and noticed several...
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Large larvae in bee hive #248805
Asked June 01, 2015, 2:22 PM EDT
Hello,
While inspecting our beehive, we found some really large larvae.
We were scraping the extra wax etc off of one of the frames and noticed several (way bigger than regular bee larvae, but smaller than the pictures i have seen for wax moths).
After looking on line, now I am afraid it might have been new queen cells? The larvae got scraped off. We did not find the queen during inspection, but could have just missed her.
We installed a new package of bees 4 weeks ago into an existing hive. Last year was our first year keeping bees and we lost the colony in March.
Any ideas what this might have been? If it was a new queen, is there time for the colony to make a new queen?
While inspecting our beehive, we found some really large larvae.
We were scraping the extra wax etc off of one of the frames and noticed several (way bigger than regular bee larvae, but smaller than the pictures i have seen for wax moths).
After looking on line, now I am afraid it might have been new queen cells? The larvae got scraped off. We did not find the queen during inspection, but could have just missed her.
We installed a new package of bees 4 weeks ago into an existing hive. Last year was our first year keeping bees and we lost the colony in March.
Any ideas what this might have been? If it was a new queen, is there time for the colony to make a new queen?
Arapahoe County Colorado
Expert Response
I think those are drones, the males. They are considerably bigger than the worker females.
The other reason I think these may be drones is that it appears that there may have been several next to each other. Queen cells are usually dispersed through the hive and not clumped, And there are rarely very many of them, usually less than a dozen. They are also quite long, longer than these appear.
The other reason I think these may be drones is that it appears that there may have been several next to each other. Queen cells are usually dispersed through the hive and not clumped, And there are rarely very many of them, usually less than a dozen. They are also quite long, longer than these appear.
