I am curious as to which queen goes with a swarm. The colony decides it's getting too large, it creates new queen cells and a percentage of workers leaves with which queen, the old or new? Also, does the new queen go out and mate before they swarm or after? (This is a wild swarm, not one from my or any known apiary).
The reason I am asking is I did an inspection for the first time on a swarm I caught. The queen was very big and plump and got right to laying (7 days after hiving them, I already have huge larva that can't be more than 3 days away from capping). So, I believe the queen that was in the swarm that I captured was the old or the existing queen.
Does this make her inferior, i.e. on her last leg? Her laying pattern already is fantastic after just 7 days in the hive. It's my first swarm and I am excited that I got some feral bees in my apiary now and I want to keep it that way, hoping that they are better adapted to Ohio winters and thus have a better chance of surviving. Which, leads to my next question about the queen I got with this swarm. Since she appears to be the older queen (not saying old, I have no idea) next year should I put them in a small box and not give them any extra room so that I get more queen cells from her genes, i.e. local Ohio genes? Of course, put the frames w/swarm cells into a nuc so they don't actually swarm.
Jeremy
that's a great question seeing as all 3 of my colonys are swarms from local tree colonies.....
It depends on a couple of factors. Whichever queen "wins" gets to stay in the old hive. It usually is the old queen that leaves, though. As far as inferiority, if the hive didn't swarm due to an inferior queen, I have no reason to think that your queen is. It could have been from over-crowded conditions or other causes.
Edited:
Oops- I meant to add something else.
This is purely anecdotal I'm sure, but my only hive is a "survivor" hive. By that, I mean it survived 5 years without any treatments or beekeeper interventions prior to my obtaining them. I got this hive back in 2001, and it's the only hive I have that survived my "organic" beekeeping techniques. These bees are highly agressive, and I handle them with kid gloves. I have never re-queened them and I let them do as nature dictates. The old-time beekeepers call this type of bees "field bees". The general consensus used to be that they were "mean but are great producers". If your bees are truly "feral" and have been unmanaged and have a high chance of very limited genetics, you may eventually find them to be more spirited than your gentle Italians. You may already be aware of this, but it's just a thought that popped into my head after your thread on the gentleness of them. :)
One must also keep in mind that swarming is how bees procreate and spread....it wouldn't do them much good to do that with a failing queen, when a queen begins to fail they supercede her. The books all say the primary swarm leaves with the reigning queen, that way they can leave before any of the virgins emerge and a fight ensues.
Correct for the first swarm, the old queen leaves with the swarm.
Most times before any new queens emerge.
doak :)
I had a package swarm and so I set about learning all I could about swarms and swarming.
Did you know that a swarm may have 2 or more queens in it? A detailed report on one bee keeper's experience with swarms indicated that as many as 6 queens can leave with a swarm?? (...these would be after swarms ie: original queen leaves with smaller initial swarm, and then the newly hatched queens leave with the after swarms) This is why swarms are sometimes tiered looking. They are actually two or more clusters of bees, surrounding two or more queens. Who knew?? Once settled apparently they "work it out" or live peacefully side by side; well maybe not 6 of them!! :-P
Quote from: NasalSponge on June 18, 2009, 11:46:23 PM
it wouldn't do them much good to do that with a failing queen, when a queen begins to fail they supercede her.
Not in all cases. Sometimes they do swarm with the failing queen instead of supercedure.
Quote from: jeremy_c on June 18, 2009, 10:05:19 PM
I am curious as to which queen goes with a swarm. The colony decides it's getting too large, it creates new queen cells and a percentage of workers leaves with which queen, the old or new? Also, does the new queen go out and mate before they swarm or after? (This is a wild swarm, not one from my or any known apiary).
The reason I am asking is I did an inspection for the first time on a swarm I caught. The queen was very big and plump and got right to laying (7 days after hiving them, I already have huge larva that can't be more than 3 days away from capping). So, I believe the queen that was in the swarm that I captured was the old or the existing queen.
Does this make her inferior, i.e. on her last leg? Her laying pattern already is fantastic after just 7 days in the hive. It's my first swarm and I am excited that I got some feral bees in my apiary now and I want to keep it that way, hoping that they are better adapted to Ohio winters and thus have a better chance of surviving. Which, leads to my next question about the queen I got with this swarm. Since she appears to be the older queen (not saying old, I have no idea) next year should I put them in a small box and not give them any extra room so that I get more queen cells from her genes, i.e. local Ohio genes? Of course, put the frames w/swarm cells into a nuc so they don't actually swarm.
Jeremy
The primary swarm has the mated queen, after swarms are ones with virgin queens that mate once the colony finds a new home. Once mated, new queens start laying, generally speaking from 3-5 days afterwards.
I keep hearing queens do their best work in their second year.
Unless you caught a very large primary swarm, you have an after swarm with a new queen.
I believe the record for amount of queens in one swarm is 22.
...JP
Quote from: JP on June 19, 2009, 12:46:11 AM
Unless you caught a very large primary swarm, you have an after swarm with a new queen.
JP... How can I or is it even possible to tell? I can say that this is 7 days since I caught/hived the swarm and this queen had to start laying almost the very next day as there is larva in the hive all over the place that is prime time for capping. I know they must have a few more days before being capped, but it's as large of larva as I've seen in any other hive. Also, the queen is big and plump. I think she may be a bit bigger than my other queens in other hives that has been laying for a few months now. When I put them in their hive, they covered 5 frames, if that is any indication to it's size or any help in deciding if it was a primary swarm or secondary.
Am I right in thinking that a newly mated queen is larger than a worker, but not yet plump? That she will grow in size once she has been laying for a few weeks? If so, then I believe what I caught was a primary swarm because of the queens size and the fact that she started laying almost immediately (obviously, she had to wait a bit for some comb to be drawn).
Jeremy
I may have misspoken, kind of. You could actually have a mated queen in an average swarm whereby that colony occupied a smaller than normal void space such as a duck box or squirrel box, birdhouse, etc...
Not all queens are strikingly plump and huge, but even the smallest virgins are larger than workers.
...JP
I knew I should have got a picture! She was different than my Italian or Carniolan queens. She was a brownish color but then toward the rear of her abdomen, it gradually turned black. No stripes. Anyway, next time I'm in the hive, I'll take my camera w/me for the fun of it.
I would like to learn to recognize when there is a virgin queen, a newly mated queen and a mated and long time laying queen.
Jeremy
I think, Jeremy, that I would be looking at retaining her genetics by making queens from her. Not that she sounds as though she is at the end of her tether but it would be good to know that you had her stock working for you in the future.
Mick
Quote from: jeremy_c on June 19, 2009, 01:41:06 AM
I would like to learn to recognize when there is a virgin queen, a newly mated queen and a mated and long time laying queen.
Jeremy
Short of an interveiw, that is going to be really tough to tell. A virgin looks an aweful lot like a queen who's slimmed down for swarming or not layed a lot.
An actively laying queen is more likely to be plumper, longer.
The older the queen gets, the more likely she is to be a little more worn looking, mostly less fuzz.
Kinda like people. :shock:
I can tell in a hive a little bit when I'm dealing with a virgin queen, but that is by the status of the hive and the behaviour of the queen. Virgins are more active, will go anywhere, and aren't doted upon as much by the other bees. Laying queens are slower, attended by bees, move with more purpose, etc.
Here's the way I answered the swarm question on a different thread, I think it should answer your question as well.
QuoteAfter swarms occur because of a staggered development of queen cells. The bees will build some queen cells, then they will build some more on a different frame or super a few days or a week later, and so on. The more staggered the building of the queen cells the more series of queen hatches will occur in the hive. In other words, for each series of queen cells the hive will swarm.
It goes like this: The queens from the first series of queen cells hatch and the hive swarms and the queens fight it out and the survivor becomes the new head mama.
a few days later thenest series of queen cells hatches out and the resident queen swarms leaving the new queens to fight it out and the survivor becomes the matriach.
Then the queens from the 3rd series of queen cells hatches and the we repeat the process. The process can be repeated as many as 12 times (that's the record I'm personally aware of).
The best solution to this is to do controlled splits with each frame containing queen cells into different nucs. The queens from each frame hatch out in different nucs and only fight for survival with their sisters from the same frame. You now have the option of retaining all the hives or dispatching some of the queens and combining them back together or use them to replace other less-productive queens in the yard.