
aug2000
Midnite Bee-Beekeeper's: Article August 2000
ARTICLES
August 2000
What do you know about QUEENS
What do you know about QUEENS
I just always assumed that
beekeepers knew "all about Queens" until I got heavily involved reading the
questions, answers, comments, and advice given on the Internet Bee-L. Then,
I started to pay more attention to questions and answers of Maryland and other
beekeepers, and to my surprise and alarm, I learned that most people are seriously
lacking much needed knowledge about the queen bee.
Further, I found that many
people are reluctant to READ the books or writings of bee scientists or bee
researchers in fear that the text might contain unfamiliar words or that the
findings might be based on an unfamiliar theory, or frankly, the writing is
just too difficult to understand. Even though I am a scientist myself, I have
Worked with the "so-called average man" long enough, I think I can "speak
his language" and with that in mind, I want to tell you much about the queen
bee that obviously has confused many people.
How many remember
one of my
favorite words: ANTHROPOMORPHIC?
It means ascribing human characteristics to non-human things, like bees.
Unlike humans, bees, including
the queen bee, have very little, if any, ability to learn anything. They are
"born" with all the information that they will ever have to know, and never
require any boss, teacher, instruction, condemnation or praise.
If you understand that
a worker bee can build comb without instruction, fly-out to forage for either
pollen, nectar, or water as needed without instruction, raise a new queen
when needed without instruction, and gather nectar in May to make honey for
winter feed when they will be dead by July, then you might have a better chance
of understanding the many things that are so important about a queen bee.
This can only make you
a BETTER BEEKEEPER and enable you to partake in the REAL JOYS OF BEEKEEPING
as I have known for 68 years.
WHERE
DO QUEENS COME FROM:
A queen lays a fertilized
egg that would normally become a worker bee. When that egg is 3 days old, it
hatches into a larva.
During the four and half
day uncapped larval period, the larva is fed 100's of times each day a rich
food of royal jelly, a secretion manufactured in the hypophyrngeal glands of
young worker bees. This specialized larval diet fully develops the female reproductive
organs, making the body larger including the wings, and develops the queen's
ability to manufacture and disperse the queen PHEROMONE, or queen substance
which is that odor that identifies her as the queen as well as exercising control
over her progeny.
To paraphrase all of that,
let's just say that: When a normal worker bee larva is fed a total diet of royal
jelly, this transforms the regular underdeveloped female worker bee into a fully
developed female that can mate and then reproduce bees. ANY worker bee larva
can become a queen bee if fed the royal jelly diet for its entire 4+ day uncapped
larval period.
DOES
A QUEEN HAVE LEADERSHIP OR RULE OVER HER COLONY?
No! (surprise?) A queen
bee is much like the queen of England: She reigns but does NOT rule. The English
parliament makes decisions and rules. In a bee colony, it is the worker bees
that make decisions and control the queen by how much and how often they feed
the queen. For example, when a colony is crowded for brood space or nectar space
and decides to swarm, the workers stop feeding the queen so she ceases egg laying
and reduces weight so she can fly, but the worker bees literally have to force
her away from the hive to the initial swarm congregating location. If she joins
the swarm, scout bees go out to find a new permanent home and off they disappear.
WHAT
DOES A QUEEN DO?
Up until about 20 years
ago, we knew little more than the queen was an egg laying machine capable
of laying 2000 eggs per day one at a time or about one egg every 43 seconds
during the peak of the brood year, generally May. She lays various quantities
of eggs almost every day for about 10 months of the year, but rests from about
Thanksgiving until mid January.
It has been estimated that
she might lay 200,000 eggs each year. By the-way, she only breeds basically
one day of her life, usually when she is about 6 days old; and she breeds with
about a dozen or more different drones who deposit about 4-5 million sperm in
her spermatheca gland where she keeps them alive for her entire life and releases
one sperm to fertilize an egg as she lays it which will result in a worker bee.
This is pretty interesting
"stuff", but not as interesting as the researcher's findings during the past
20 years about the queen PHEROMONE, or queen substance.
A queen bee has the ability
to produce a scent or an odor that acts as a glue to bind perhaps 40,000-50
000 bees together as one functioning working unit rather that splitting
up by swarming.
Further, the pheromone
suppresses the sexually immature worker bees from laying eggs, as well as suppressing
the natural worker bee aggression to other bees to a feeling of cohesion with
the queen, and finally, the pheromone is a stabilizing influence within a swarm
that provides the worker bees the justification for swarming.
It is thought by some
that the function of the queen PHEROMONE is more important than the laying ability
of a queen because of swarm prevention. Unfortunately, it has been proven that
the ability of a queen to produce this pheromone is at it's height on her mating
flight and diminishes a little each day for the rest of her life.
Hence, a real young queen
can prevent swarming better than a 1 year old queen, and much better
than a two year old queen. This is one of the reasons why present day commercial
beekeepers, highly dependent on honey production, requeen annually and rarely
let a queen live a second season.
WHAT
IS THE LIFE SPAN OF A QUEEN? THE USEFUL SPAN?
There has been reports
of queens living as much as 5 years, and many cases of queens lasting 3 years.
If one is not upset by swarming, keeping a queen for 2 years is not unusual.
However, if you are desirous of high honey production, your colony has to have
a high population and not given to swarming, and both of these requirements
need the services of a very young queen, only a few months old.
WHY
HAVE A MARKED
QUEEN?
Unlike humans, dogs, or
cats, queen bees are more like robins, rabbits, or bass fish in that "they all
look alike" unless they are of different races. After 68 years of beekeeping,
I still don't know whether to think of a beekeeper who tells me
that he knows his unmarked queen is 3 years old and still going strong, is a
genius or a liar.
Several times in my life,
for requeening, I have purchased 50 queens from two different queen breeders,
and as I examined them, I could not tell one from any other they were all pretty
much identical. If one of my colonies swarms, I want to know it. If one supersedes
the queen, I want to know it. If one group of colonies all headed by queens
from one breeder produces more honey or becomes infected with some disease more
than some other group of colonies with queens from a different breeder, I want
to know that. I want each of queens to have a "social security" number, so I
have nothing but MARKED QUEENS and every good beekeeper should do likewise.
Not only is a marked queen
much easier to locate in a colony, but the color of her mark tells you her age,
or the breeder who produced her. When I
catch a wild swarm, I mark the queen SILVER (light GRAY) so I know she
is not a known "pedigreed" queen, and I use her in a comb building hive or in
an observation hive at my honey sales booth or school demonstrations. I mark
my own queens, but you can buy marked queens by paying just $1 more.
"When I constantly hear
people say they "can't find their queen", or people say they lost their honey
crop because the bees swarmed, I wonder how important that $1 must be to them.
Even worse, when most queens cost about $10-$12, I just don't understand
why anyone would take a chance on losing a several hundred dollar honey crop
rather than pay $10-$12 for a new, young queen. MARK YOUR QUEENS!
WHAT
IS A SUPERSEDURE QUEEN? WHAT HAPPENED TO HER MOTHER? WHY?
Maybe the "average life
span" of a human is about 75 years, and the average life span of a queen bee
is perhaps 3-4 years, but some humans never see 50 or even 20, and some queen
bees never reach 2 or even 1.
Hence, just because you
bought a new queen last April, why are you so surprised to find a NEW UNmarked
queen in your colony this April. Where did she come from? Is she any good? Will
she still be there next April?
Queens die primarily from
any of several reasons: accidentally injured or crushed by the beekeeper, disease,
poorly bred and not doing an adequate laying job so the workers initiate supersedure,
or lost on her mating flight. When a colony has become successful enough to
be overly populated and short of space, they "look forward" to swarming and
plan ahead to
leave a WELL NURTURED virgin queen behind to take over the parent colony; therefore
building large swarm cells and STUFFING ROYAL JELLY into these cells as soon
as an EGG is laved in one.
The egg hatches 3 days
later into a larva and this new larva enjoys "feasting" on an abundant supply
of royal jelly for the next 4.5 days until the cell is capped and even has enough
royal jelly to continue feasting for another day in the newly capped cell before
it commences its pupal life and emerges about 7 days later as a virgin queen.
The prenatal history of
a supersedure queen is not well orchestrated nor planned ahead. When
a colony suddenly finds itself queenLESS, regardless of the reason, the worker
bees so badly want a queen mother that they RUSH against time to develop a queen
who will restore colony morale. Hence, they select a worker egg or even a
2 day old larva on the face of a brood comb, build a wax cup around that
egg or larva, deposit royal jelly in the cell and "hope".
It is obvious that this
underdeveloped larva does not get the full ration of royal jelly that occurs
in a swarm cell, and hence the resulting queen may be inferior. Note that I
did not say "is" inferior, but I said "may be" inferior.
So you have a supersedure
queen - is she any
good? It will take you the best part of a year to find out, which may mean the
loss of honey production, pollination, or enjoyment for that year.
Although almost EVERY bee
researcher, honey bee scientist, and commercial honey producers
requeen EVERY year, there are still the "old timers", the hobbyist, and
the beeHAVERS who still think requeening every two years is adequate and/or
that by not having marked queens and hence allowing colonies to requeen themselves
is OK, even possibly getting inferior superseded queens.
Well, suit yourself, but
I don't start a vacation drive to the beach with smooth tires, old crankcase
oil, short of freon in my air conditioning, and a torn wiper blade.
Dr. Basil Furgala, the
very famous bee researcher from Univ. of Minnesota wrote: Having old queens
in colonies during the fall and winter too often brings about:
1) A supersedure in
the fall, too late for the virgin queen to be mated, resulting in a drone layer.
2) A failing old queen in the late winter or early spring resulting in a void
in egg laying occurring when accelerated brood' production is a necessity for
proper development of the colony. 3) The death of the old queen during the winter,
leaving the colony queenless.
Does
a QUEEN Bee sting? Another Bee? Another Queen? A Human?
Of course, a queen bee
can sting, but unlike a worker bee, the stinger is smooth and does not have
any barbs on it so that it be used more than once. Like the old adage that "two
women in the same house means trouble", if two queens suddenly meet in the same
colony, one will fatally sting the other within a few minutes. As for worker
bees or a human, there is no reason for a queen to sting a worker bee of her
own colony whose job it is to protect their queen; and, although their have
been a very few cases of a virgin queen stinging a human, there is almost no
record of a human being stung by a queen bee. That is why one should not hesitate
to pick up a queen with your bare hand avoiding her abdomen and carefully hold
her by the thorax to mark her, or put her in a queen cage.
Time elapse between
the queen laying a worker egg and a foraging bee? Too many beekeepers loss much
of their honey crop because their queen started laying brood too late in the
spring. A worker bee does NOT become a nectar forager for honey production until
FORTY DAYS after the egg was layed. Hence, if black locust bloomed on April
1 5th, a foraging bee egg had to have been layed before March 6th. Never forget
that 40 days!
WHAT
IS THE DIFFERENCE IN RACES?
Since the genetic differences
of each race is determined by the breeding of the queen bee, each race has certain
good points as well as negative points, and YOU should choose your race based
in the most important good points and the least important bad points based on
YOUR ABILITY in beekeeping.
The only races that I will
mention are Carniolan, Caucasian, Italian which are the only three that are
"somewhat pure" in the U. S. today. All the other well known names are MAN PRODUCED
hybrids that can NOT reproduce themselves, such as Buckfast, Midnite, Starline,
and the new Russian and all of these can only be replaced by buying a new queen
from a queen breeder who produces that hybrid.
In general, all hybrids
get nasty and more nasty if they
allowed to reproduce on-their-own. Of course, one can not define the good or
the bad qualities of Aunt Eva's bees, Uncle Tom's bees, or anyone else who allows
their bees to reproduce themselves resulting in sort of a League of Nations
bee, because nobody knows who were the many Daddy's and Granddaddy's over recent
years.
Just some of the more important
good points to be considered are: gentleness, disease resistance, honey production,
wintering ability, comb building, etc. Some of the important bad points to be
considered are: excessive swarming, robbing, excessive use of propolis, poor
wax capping, and disease proneness. The Carniolan is noted for its unusual gentleness,
wintering ability, and maybe disease resistance; but it is also known to have
a high propensity
to swarm.
The Caucasian is known
to be gentle, good wintering ability; but is also well known for an over abundant
use of propolis which makes hive management difficult and is subject to Nosema
disease more than most other bees.
The Italian is mostly known
as a "pretty" 3 striped yellow bee, moderately gentle, good honey production,
good comb builder; but is also known as "the King of Robber Bees" and over production
of brood resulting in heavy use of honey stores.
One should never select
a race because "George said it was the best" or because "most of the local club
members use the "xyz race" or because "queen breeder Joe Jones impressed
me".
Far better is you reading
the myriad number of good and bad points of bees written by bee scientists and
researchers, and select the race based upon what is most important to you and
fits in with your ability to manage your bees properly.
How
to Requeen? When?
Many beekeepers LOSE their
new $10 queen, because their colony is NOT queenless or they are trying to requeen
a colony during
a lousy nectar flow that has a lot of unhappy foraging aged bees. The almost
sure way to determine whether a colony is truly queenless is to insert a frame
of EGGS OR 1 DAY OLD LARVAE IN IT and see if the bees try and develop a supersedure
queen cell.
If they do, the colony
is queenless; but if no supersedure cell is built, there is some bee in that
colony that the other bees recognize as a queen, and any new queen you try to
introduce will be killed. It could be a virgin queen or a laying worker.
It is always easy to add
a queen to a nuc of young nurse bees with few foragers. After this new queen
is accepted and laying well in the nuc, you kill the old queen in the parent
colony and unite the parent colony with the nuc.
Most people like to requeen
in the spring, when the colonies are still small and the bees gentle because
of a nectar flow. Because I don't want to interfere with my Maryland nectar
flow of April and May, plus the fact that it is very difficult to get well bred
queens in March, I prefer fall requeening. While it is true that late summer
and early fall is a tougher time to requeen than spring because the colonies
are bigger and harder to handle, queen breeders can get better queen breeding
in the summer and they can ship to me on an exact date with no guesswork.
My IMIRIE ALMOST FOOLPROOF
REQUEENING method, shown below, allows me to approve the new queen before I
kill the old queen plus having two queens laying in the same colony for about
6 weeks prior to winter provides many young bees for winter and warm early brood
in late winter to gain a large population of foragers for the April-May nectar
flow.
IMIRIE REQUEENING
METHOD (ALMOST FOOLPROOF)
Select
an exact date for your new queen to arrive and make it known to your queen
breeder, and get a MARKED
QUEEN.
TEN days before the new
queen is to arrive, insert 1
queen excluders in between any two boxes where your old queen can go.
When your new
queen arrives, water her and store her in a cool dark place until needed.
Gather up a
double screen board, an empty hive body, 10 drawn combs, and a feeder with a
gallon of 1:1 sugar
syrup.
Find the OLD queen (which
ever brood box has larva is where the
queen will be found) in the colony you want to requeen.
Set her ASIDE away from
the colony, so that
you free to manipulate all the other frames in the colony.
Select 3
frames of brood: 1 capped and 2 of eggs and larva, all with the covering nurse
bees. Place these
in the center of the empty hive body.
Now add 6 more frames,
as follows: 2 empty
drawn comb, (one on each side of the brood frames), 2 frames of pollen and honey,
(one on each side of the drawn comb), then 2 more empty drawn comb, (one on
each side of the honey-pollen frames).
This totals 9 frames leaving
space for the queen
cage. Now take several frames of brood ...remaining in the old colony ...and
shake the nurse bees
into the new 9 frame nuc.
Cover the nuc and set it
aside for a while. Return
the frame with the OLD queen to her home hive and replace the 5 frames you removed
(3 of brood + 2 of honey-pollen) with empty drawn frames
Now put the double screen board on top of the old colony so that its entrance
faces to the rear of the parent colony.
Set the new 9 frame nuc
on top and install the new queen (make sure you remove the cork from the candy
end). Start feeding the new nuc immediately.
After about 3-5 days, check
the queen cage very quickly using
little or no smoke to see if the queen has been released. If she has
not, you release her from the cage.
Do NOT disturb for another
5-7 days and then check with as little disturbance and smoke as possible tooking
for eggs and larva.
Add the 10th frame and
remove the queen cage. During the next few weeks (I like about 5-6) check the
brood pattern of
the new queen. If you like it and want to accept that new queen, find the old
queen down below
the double screen, kill her, and remove the double screen board.
This method has a couple
of advantages: 1) if something is wrong with the new queen, you kill her and
the colony has a backup with the old queen; and you requeen the colony at a
later date, and 2) for about 5-6 weeks, you have 2 queens laying eggs that increase
the number of bees which will make the hive stronger for winter and reduce the
stresses of Winter.
Note: If you don't
have a Double Screen Board - You should. If you are not sure how it is made,
imagine a wooden queen excluder frame without the metal wires, covered on both
sides by 8 mesh wire - A DOUBLE SCREEN BOARD. Brushy Mountain Bee Farm in North
Carolina makes and sells a fancy, very, nice one.