Virgin Queens...

LindsayBrower1 · January 03, 2015, 11:29:56 PM

I posted this on another forum but I am looking for some more answers...
I seem to talk about virgin queens often and notice that others don't... I can easily identify the difference between a mated and non- mated queen and even pick them out relatively well among workers. Although identifying them is not a problem, I seem to have some curiousity that I am seeking opinions about... How long do you estimate a 5 frame nuc to completely die going into the cold months due to a virgin queen?Due to the cold weather none of the bees were leaving the hive. I know there can be a lot of different variables to getting an answer but Im curious for an approximate.. I had a late season removal that had a functioning queen at my last inspection while winterizing my hives. I checked on them a few weeks ago and the hive was dead.. For how long? I don't know.Upon inspection I found a handful of dead bees and a virgin with them... Some of its characteristics upon dead out inspection:good amount of nectar and honey, a ton of pollen, virtually no brood.. only a few capped worker pupa- some looked far enough along to be hatching but other open cells were still not mature enough but had chewed off caps... very white pupa in color, no darkening of the eyes. As I looked closer I in fact FOUND a few random eggs in regular worker cells. My second question is, will an infertile queen lay eggs in a worker size cell even though they would develop into drone?? I've read that normally a queen would decide whether or not to fertilize an egg before laying it.. So would a drone layer know they couldn't fertilize eggs?? Perhaps a silly question....

Michael Bush · January 04, 2015, 12:25:47 AM

In my experience (and in Francis Huber's Observation) a queen who never mates never lays an egg. A queen who mates late lays unfertilized eggs. She doesn't know they are not fertile, of course. Drone layers were either mated late or they are old and ran out of sperm to fertilize the eggs.

LindsayBrower1 · January 04, 2015, 12:54:46 AM

Very interesting.... Her body appearance was 100% virgin, very short and triangular abdomen.... not filled out at all...

LindsayBrower1 · January 04, 2015, 12:56:20 AM

Maybe there was a laying worker?? I wouldn't think a laying worker would lay ONE egg per cell and have them so consistently and beautifully placed in the cells... Or that there was a long enough period of being queen-less to have a laying worker

GSF · January 04, 2015, 07:01:25 AM

My experience with a laying worker hive is just what you read about. Multiple eggs here there, everywhere and on the sides of the cells. Far from what a fertilized queen would do.

btw, welcome to beemaster and good luck with your bees.

LindsayBrower1 · January 04, 2015, 11:02:05 AM

Thank you Michael Bush! Thank you GSF!!
I appreciate the input

10framer · January 04, 2015, 02:40:18 PM

welcome to the forum.
sounds like a queen failure on some level. the hives that i think i've lost to varroa usually die out similar to what you described. i think the bees attempt to supersede too late as a last ditch effort to save the colony and you end up with a virgin queen. a few weeks later you get what you described. i think a lot of what people consider to be ccd is the result of that exact scenario.

LindsayBrower1 · January 04, 2015, 05:13:06 PM

Thanks for the input 10framer...
Would there have been dead varroa all over the bottom of the hive? There wasn't any drone brood to uncap and check for a mite count and I didn't see any varroa on the on the dead bees in the hive. Just about 5 small hive beetles on the bottom of the nuc dead.

10framer · January 05, 2015, 12:01:14 AM

the mites would have been on any brood. the mites would most likely not have any reason to stay on dead bees.
trust me, i'm operating off of assumptions. the mite count is usually heaviest in the fall, if the bees see the problem as a result of a failing queen and rush to replace her and that queen ends up either not mated or poorly mated then the hive slides down hill faster. the end result is a hive with a handful of bees but plenty of stores (this is how people describe ccd). in the fall and early winter a hives population would be decreasing under the best circumstances but if a lot of the emerging bees in early fall have dwv and crawl off and die the population will decrease a lot faster. again, i don't have any science to back me up it's (but it may be out there), it's just my theory. last winter i had two hives that were spiraling and there were enough mites present for me to see them on workers. i did a newspaper combination with them and they surprisingly raised a new queen long before i saw any drones and not only survived but i managed to harvest a medium from them.

Michael Bush · January 05, 2015, 11:18:43 AM

> Her body appearance was 100% virgin, very short and triangular abdomen.... not filled out at all...

When a queen first emerges she is often difficult to tell from a worker. She is larger, but more in the thorax than the abdomen. She goes out and mates and starts laying and she fills out. When she stops laying she shrinks back down. A queen that hasn't been laying for a while can be quite small. When she starts laying again in the spring she will fill out again. When she's in the middle of peak production she's laying thousands of eggs a day (several times her own weight) and she is very fat. When she's not producing her ovaries shrink down.

sterling · January 05, 2015, 03:33:27 PM

Quote from: 10framer on January 05, 2015, 12:01:14 AM
the mites would have been on any brood. the mites would most likely not have any reason to stay on dead bees.
trust me, i'm operating off of assumptions. the mite count is usually heaviest in the fall, if the bees see the problem as a result of a failing queen and rush to replace her and that queen ends up either not mated or poorly mated then the hive slides down hill faster. the end result is a hive with a handful of bees but plenty of stores (this is how people describe ccd). in the fall and early winter a hives population would be decreasing under the best circumstances but if a lot of the emerging bees in early fall have dwv and crawl off and die the population will decrease a lot faster. again, i don't have any science to back me up it's (but it may be out there), it's just my theory. last winter i had two hives that were spiraling and there were enough mites present for me to see them on workers. i did a newspaper combination with them and they surprisingly raised a new queen long before i saw any drones and not only survived but i managed to harvest a medium from them.

You combined to two hives with high mite counts? what did you do about the mites? That seems like fighting fire with fire

10framer · January 05, 2015, 03:53:49 PM

sterling, i did nothing about the mites. it was late january or early february and i wasn't going to combine them with hives that didn't have mites. i was basically writing them off. i found a dead virgin at the entrance a day or two after i combined them and i opened them up on a warm day in february and there were capped queen cells so i crushed the existing queen and closed them back up thinking i'd break it down in a couple of weeks and throw the frames in the freezer then pull them out later and put them on another hive. i didn't open them up again until maybe the first of april and found a big laying queen. i don't treat my bees. i use brood breaks. i don't do anything for hive beetles anymore either. i crush them when i see them but i saw very few in 2014.

CBT · January 11, 2015, 09:16:39 AM

On inspection is it possible the mass of bees in the hive was not enough to keep warm?

troyin17331 · January 12, 2015, 08:01:30 AM

on laying workers " Or that there was a long enough period of being queen-less to have a laying worker"

laying workers do only lay one egg per cell but there is no such think as "A" laying worker there is never just one and they ALL lay one egg per cell that is why there is multiple eggs per cell