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  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Dan Kyburz <dkyburzus AT gmail.com>, Thomas Grizzle <griz AT mindspring.com>
  • Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Queen Cells
  • Date: Tue, 8 May 2012 14:35:52 -0400

Tom,

Before panicking, I think we can get some reassurance from the math.

You installed the hive 3.5 weeks ago. It took a few days for the caged queen to be released. It takes 21 days (3 weeks) to make a worker bee. So if the queen was released and started laying 3 days after you installed the hive, you should just now be seeing new bees (3 and a half weeks out). In the meantime the package bees have been dying at a normal rate, something like 3 to 4 percent of the population per day, assuming a 30-day worker lifespan. So the hive shouldn't be too crowded yet (if you have logical-minded, well-adjusted bees), since the population hasn't even recovered to what it started with. As long as you have a reasonable amount of empty comb, swarming shouldn't be at the top of your list of concerns --- not yet.

If all that is true, then the queen cells you found were supercedure cells, not swarm cells. That is most likely in this situation anyway --- it isn't unusual for packages to try to replace their queen. If so, destroying the queen cells didn't do any real harm. Unlike a swarming situation, the old queen will still be there until the new queen has emerged and is ready to go. In fact it is fairly common for the old queen and the replacement queen to overlap for a while in the hive -- I have witnessed this in my own hives. So, again, if this scenario is what is going on, you don't need to panic. If you do try to introduce a new queen right now, she'll simply be killed because the old queen is still there.

If your bees are bound & determined to replace the queen, you can simply let them do it. Chances are the resulting queen will be just as good or better than the mass-produced queen that came with your package. The new queen will simply come in and replace the old one. You won't lose very much momentum, which isn't the case with swarming. Be careful, though, because capped queen cells are easily damaged when you pull frames in and out to inspect them. If I know there is a queen cell on a frame, I mark it by putting a thumb tack in the top bar and then I make sure I don't mess with that frame or its 2 neighbors.

You should be able to learn to find the queen with practice. FIRST make sure you are wearing a good pair of reading glasses --- for me, that's more important than my smoker or hive tool! Don't use size as a guide. Your Italian queen probably has a solid almond-colored abdomen --- your workers do not. The top of the thorax of your queen is bald & shiny --- the top of the thorax of your workers is fuzzy. Your workers scoot all over the frames in different directions. Your queen (if you are lucky) plods along like a plowhorse in a straight line, stopping every now and then to stick her head into a cell to see if it is empty. Or she may be standing still, surrounded by attentive workers like in a football huddle. It takes practice to pick up on these cues but once you know what a queen does (and doesn't) look like, it is easy. Unless she's hiding, which some queens love to do! One of the things I learned early on is that if you have to ask, "Is that the queen?" then it isn't. So don't waste time trying to decide if a particular bee is the queen --- if you see her, you'll know!

Let us know how it turns out!

Randall Austin

.


On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 1:39 PM, Dan Kyburz <dkyburzus AT gmail.com> wrote:

Newbie giving his 2 cents, but I would…

A)     Make sure you can find a queen or at least eggs or have someone help you in locating them.  If not I would install a new queen since the queen cups were destroyed.  (Did they have eggs or royal jelly in them?)

B)     Possibly give them more room by adding another medium super on top.  Especially if you think there are questionably building swarm cells.  Wasn’t sure which edge you are referring to.  I’ve found that I have waited to long to add more space.  You may also consider rotating your empty frames more inward.

Best of luck,

Dan

 

From: ocba-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:ocba-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Grizzle
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2012 1:16 PM
To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [ocba] Queen Cells

 

Hi All,

 

Take everything I am about to say with a grain of salt.  A newbee is talking here.

 

I am 3.5 weeks into installing a bee box and queen (from Busy Bee) into a single new 10-frame hive with nothing but foundation.  I fed them the equivalent of two 5 pound bags of sugar and stopped feeding them at that point.  Today I went into the hive to check it out. 

 

There appeared to be more bees than I installed, that’s the first thing I noted.  There is honey stored away on parts of a few frames, and capped brood were visible.  I find searching for a queen a hopeless endeavor.  It is like looking at a giant oak tree on a breezy day and trying to find the biggest leaf.  Ain’t gonna happen.  That aside, I went through all 10 frames and found 4 queen cells, one in the middle of a frame, one more to the edge but not on the edge, and two on edges.  I destroyed all four.  Too late it occurred to me that I might have a failing queen and they were trying to “fix things.”

 

There were still two frames with no comb drawn out, so they are not overcrowded.  My Chapel Hill site is in a neighborhood next to a rather large forest (for in-town), the American Legion woods…about 20 acres, I’d estimate, and there are poplar trees here I am certain.  Water is not a problem.  Anyway…

 

What should I do?  Let them be(e) seems like the best option at this point.

 

Tom Grizzle


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