Inspected my hives on Sunday.
The larger of the two (2d year) is about 7 out of 10 frames full on two supers and recently I put a shallow on it with a queen excluder. There were about three queen cells in total on the lower frames but all were empty and uncapped. There is plenty of new larvae and eggs so the queen is there, even though I didn't see her.
However, I heard the queen piping...actually took a minute to realize what it was. Does this piping mean anything?
Any advice?
Thanks.
I just read about this at breakfast in Seeley's Honeybee Democracy book (which you should definitely read). A newly emerged queen makes the piping sound and the other, still pupal stage queens respond with piping of their own. This tells the newly emerged queen that she has potential competition in the hive from other queens that have not yet emerged. Based on this, she may decide to stick around and try and kill off the other queen cells, or signal the workers, with a different kind of piping, to prepare for swarming.
Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure that's a correct account of what I read this morning. I will read the same page after work and make any necessary corrections.
Piping describes a noise made by virgin and mated queen bees during certain times of the virgin queens' development. Fully developed virgin queens communicate through vibratory signals: "quacking" from virgin queens in their queen cells and "tooting" from queens free in the colony, collectively known as piping. A virgin queen may frequently pipe before she emerges from her cell and for a brief time afterwards. Mated queens may briefly pipe after being released in a hive.
Piping is most common when there is more than one queen in a hive. It is postulated that the piping is a form of battle cry announcing to competing queens and the workers their willingness to fight. It may also be a signal to the worker bees which queen is the most worthwhile to support.
The piping sound is a G♯ (aka A♭). The adult queen pipes for a two-second pulse followed by a series of quarter-second toots Copied from Wiki.
ive heard em do it when i grab em up with my hand, or like today when i smoked out a swarm out of soffit. Ive had them in a bucket and heard em do it.
Place two caged queens in a dark room next to each other.....good chance they will start piping, once mine did it half the night.
Thanks. I don't know what will happen, since I didn't see one much two queens, there was new larvae and the cups were empty. I will just wait to see if they swarm. Maybe since I was smoking them and manipulating the hive more than usual that day, she was sounding off at me for some reason. Thanks for the help.