ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers
List archive
- From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
- To: Hamsiba Family <hamsibas AT gmail.com>
- Cc: Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen
- Date: Sun, 03 May 2015 19:17:44 -0400
Brad,
There are always a few laying workers in a hive. Normally, the housekeeping bees recognize their eggs as being "not right" (for example, they don't have queen marker pheromone on them) and they eat them. However in a hive that feels it is hopelessly queenless, the worker bees accept the laying worker eggs as being "normal" and act as if they have a queen; they are engaging in a last-chance Hail Mary play to at least get some of their genes out in the world through drones. So technically the real problem isn't laying workers, it is worker bees that embrace laying workers. How long this takes can vary a LOT between colonies and between bee races, from two weeks to never. It also depends on how long it has been since there has been worker brood, not just how long it has been queenless. If you were to periodically insert a frame of open worker brood into a hive, that would quash the laying-worker-acceptance problem. I do think you are right, though -- I think that as a rule of thumb a hive that is truly queenless for a month is clearly on the brink of accepting laying workers. And it takes about a month for a new queen to go from egg to evidence that she's there (eggs/brood). So the beekeeper is left scratching his/her head. You can't successfully insert a new store-bought queen if the hive is secretly queen-right. But you don't want to wait far too long before doing something. That's why the standard advice of inserting a frame of brood in the questionable hive to see if they build queen cells is a really good practice. Not only will it signal you regarding the queen-right status, the pheromones from the open worker brood will help delay acceptance of laying worker brood. This is where understanding what is going on in the hive and deciding what is LIKELY happening is important. If someone says that their hive is queenless & broodless in October, that is likely a very different thing than if they say it is queenless & broodless during spring swarming season. In the latter, in my limited experience, about 100% of the time the bees are doing what they've been doing for the past 50 million or so years: reproducing via swarming, which involves a break in brood and a period where the hive deceptively appears queenless. The human panic factor kicks in slightly earlier than the natural resolution of the issue. Patience is called for, as well as a quick refresher in bee math. I'm a guilty as the next guy as far as impatience and forgetting the math, and I have lots of sad stories as a result. But I'm trying to do better! Randall On 5/3/2015 4:37 PM, Hamsiba Family wrote: CA+x3aG64dHJreeiUCKkH9mj9nPqzeT1aUut0xKMNqM-UvfDj-g AT mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> |
-
[ocba] To requeen or not to requeen,
George Morris, 05/02/2015
-
Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen,
Randall Austin, 05/03/2015
-
Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen,
Hamsiba Family, 05/03/2015
-
Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen,
Randall Austin, 05/03/2015
- Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen, Jerry Schoendorf, 05/05/2015
-
Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen,
Randall Austin, 05/03/2015
-
Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen,
Hamsiba Family, 05/03/2015
- <Possible follow-up(s)>
- Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen, George Morris, 05/03/2015
-
Re: [ocba] To requeen or not to requeen,
Randall Austin, 05/03/2015
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.