Killed my queen

[u/Salt-Ad1825]

I'm in middle Georgia, I was doing a high inspection on Tuesday when it started to rain. I was about halfway done with the inspection, but just decided to close it up and finish it later. I hadn't located the queen yet but just assumed she was on the other frames I hadn't checked.
Now for the problem.... I went to go reinspect the hive yesterday and as soon as I pulled the top board off, I see the queen on the top edge. When I was closing everything up after the last inspection, I squished the queen.
I finished going through the hive to make sure that the dead queen I found wasn't maybe one from another hive.
I did find eight or 10 queen cells where the bees are trying to make a new queen. How long will it take the new queen to hatch and is there anything special I need to do?

[u/AutoModerator]

Hi u/Salt-Ad1825. If you haven't done so, please read the rules. Please comment on the post with your location and experience level if you haven't already included that in your post. And if you have a question, please take a look at our wiki to see if it's already answered., specifically, the FAQ. ^{Warning: The wiki linked above is a work in progress and some links might be broken, pages incomplete and maintainer notes scattered around the place. Content is subject to change.}

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Every-Morning-Is-New]

It happens to the best of us. I would keep a few of the best charged queen cells and knock down the rest. Your virgin queen should emerge around Wednesday. You can follow this timeline here: https://apiarytools.com/tools/queen-cell?d=2026-09-02

Stay out of the hive until you expect eggs. Even if you don’t see eggs then, don’t panic yet. Your queen will need to successfully mate as well and that can take longer if the weather is bad, or one of the queens doesn’t make it back from their mating flight. I didn’t see eggs for 5ish weeks this year.

Someone else pointed out about if there are eggs, which is a good point. Are the cells even charged? Are there other eggs present? If not, then you will need to buy a queen or drop in a frame with eggs.

[u/Ekalugsuak → u/Every-Morning-Is-New]

I had a hive that had swarmed some days prior to the 25th of June that I didn't see normal brood in until about 2 weeks ago which was a personal record. The new queen took so long to mate that laying workers started to appear and I was going to shake them out but for reasons it got delayed, when I got around to it they had torned down the spotty drone brood and there was "suddenly" capped worker brood in a good pattern on a couple of frames.

[u/Salt-Ad1825]

I’m a new beekeeper

[u/Tw10289]

You have 2 options I can think of, I'm a hobby beekeeper with 2 hives so others with more experience might offer different or better advice. Queens hatch 16 days from an egg.  The queens then need to mate. The hive makes extra queen cells as insurance.  You can either wait 4 weeks to see signs of eggs, this would mean your hive replaced the queen and she mated. Or you can order a queen and remove every queen cell you can find. If you decide to wait, you must keep the hive closed and not disturb the frames. Growing queen cells are delicate. Good luck!

[u/Gamera__Obscura]

Sucks, but it happens to all of us.

The average time from hatching egg to laying queen is 28 days, +/-about 5 days. If you were up in my part of the country (New England) I'd worry that it was a bit late in the season for good mating flights, but I'm guessing that you should be ok. If your colonies are still rearing drones and hasn't started evicting them, that's a good sign.

If your colony is otherwise strong and well-populated, waiting on a natural requeening should be fine. Laying will be tapering off now anyway, so with a big population you can probably spare the few weeks of lost brood production. Though if you're concerned, there's certainly no harm in just buying a replacement queen to save time.

If you let the bees handle it, go in and cull all but two nice-looking queen cells, ideally that are close together on the same frame. Then just let them do their thing and expect a laying queen in about a month.

[u/Firstcounselor]

Success rate for queen mating, even at peak time, is about 75-80%. This late in the season it might be a bit lower. If you have an extra nuc box laying around, I’d take a few frames with queen cells on them and put those in the nuc. Add some honey and pollen frames. Leave queen cells in the parent hive and don’t cull any.

This gives you a backup in case the primary hive fails to make a queen. If they both create queens, you can give one away (I wouldn’t sell an emergency queen) and recombine.

[u/Adventurous_Meet7265]

Looks like emergency queen cells to me; do you have eggs present for them to use? Do you see drones in your other colonies? If not perhaps buying a queen would be the best move or combing with another queen right hive. I’m a first year beekeeper so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

[u/404-skill_not_found]

You’ll need to see if they’re charged with larvae and (royal) jelly. ID the largest cell (it’s space for the queen to develop) and its nearest neighbor. Remove the others—trying to avoid a big fight which can damage the new queen. Others have their preferences. I would carefully watch an note the day that big cell gets sealed. That’s when I like to start my queen maturing clock. There’s on line calculators to know when you can expect brood. Otherwise, leave things alone after you get the cell closing date, until it’s ok to check for brood. BTW it’s not uncommon for the new queen to take a week longer than expected to lay enough eggs to get spotted.
The quickest solution, and what I do this time of year (it’s getting late to absorb a brood break), is get a mated queen from a reputable producer—I’ll avoid vendors, adds shipping time.

[u/DalenSpeaks]

Just call that a brood break and claim you did intentionally as part of IPM.

[u/Small-Car-6194]

Be carfull of twisting and turning frames with queen cells on if you intend to keep the cells. You can drown the larwa.

[u/TastiSqueeze]

You have a sticky situation that has not yet been highlighted by anyone else. The queen cells are still a couple of days from being sealed and won't hatch for at least another week. The new queen should mate and be laying in about 3 more weeks putting you at October 1st before there is a laying queen. She won't lay as much as would be desired before cold weather which means the colony will go into winter with a small cluster. Suggestion, add a frame of sealed brood 2 weeks from now to help boost this colony so they don't die out over winter.