That old queen still kicking butt!!!!!

[Cindi]

So, Thursday was my day of research, as Brian Bray would have called it.

Let's update on what my intentions were with my overwintered "baby" colony, which is boiling over with bees by the way, probably 9 frames fulll (ooops, I know that is probably a "condition red").  The terrarium heater brought this little colony from the brink of extinction to a growing concern!!!!

On Tuesday, May 2, upon inspection of this overwintered colony, I noticed one queen cell right up near the top of the frame (#7 frame), with a two day old (or so) larva in it.  Obvious supercedure going on, no other cells, just one.  I estimated that the queen would emerge on Friday, May 18, so my intention was to take the old Carniolan queen (last year's queen) from this colony and start a nuc and let the bees continue on raising this supercedure queen that was in the process.

I was busy, doing too much work outside and didn't get around to doing this task until Thursday last (day before yesterday).  I had already set a 10 deep hive body with 2 honey/pollen frames, an inner frame feeder, a frame of foundation, 2 frames drawn comb, and a piece of thick styrofoam (to keep the colony a little warmer and reduce the size by one frame full)  beside the parent colony, warming in the sun for when I performed this task.  So all was set, ready to go.

I went to the apiary, fully suited up, smoker (in case I required smoke), my spray bottle of diluted sugar syrup and proceeded.  I decided to go on the safer side and smoked them just a tiny little bit through the front entrance reducer.  Lifted off the lid, lifted the inner cover and sprayed a little sugar water, waited for about a minute and then removed the inner cover completely.

I looked through the colony frame by frame.  I always start on the south side, that is what I will always call frame #1.  When I got to frame #4 (by the way, the supercedure cell that I saw was on frame #7 on that Tuesday before last), so I had lots of time to take my time and have some interesting fun.  On the bottom of frame #4 was some drawn comb, drone comb to be precise, with eggs in it.  I will remove this comb in a few days (once it has been capped) and check to see if there is any varroa mites inside, doing its hideous job of breeding.  This frame #4 had eggs and larvae in all stages, so did the next frame.  Frame #6 was full of capped brood and so was frame #7.  This queen is doing her job, let me tell you that.   

Ooops, right, forgot to say, I found the queen on frame #3, there was her majesty, traversing the comb, as regal as the day is now long.  Many eggs, larvae in all stages on this frame too.  What a beautiful site.  There is something about observing the queen, it makes me feel so good.  It is a sign of prosperity  of the colony, knowing that things are in order with colony. 

Somewhere along the line this queen must have been superceded already, probably last year, she no longer was the dark, dark, queen that was originally in the hive, she now looked very light coloured.  She does not look as "golden" orange as the Kona Italian queens that are in my nucs and packages, she is darker, but she is definitely not the Carniolan I saw last year.  Oh well.  The bees know best, whatever they happen to be up to.  I placed this frame of bees, eggs, larvae (and capped larvae too) into their new home.

So, where was I, right.  Now I examined frame #7 very carefully because that was where I saw the supercedure cell on May 2, like I said, right along the very top of the frame.  This cell was not to be seen anywhere.  Gone..... Obviously, the reigning queen must have found here, killed her and the bees tore down the cell.  Plain and simple, it was not there, not even a remenant of it.  BUT.......I did see three more queen cells.  I looked as best as I could, but I could not see an egg inside, YET... The three cells were in slightly different stages of being developed.  The cells were spaced evenly across the frame, not even close to one another.  So....

I proceeded to frame #8, capped brood, now that is a total of 3 frames full of capped brood.  I would consider the queen doing well.  I placed another of the frames of brood into the new colony.  That would make 2 frames of brood and the queen.  I took frame #9 and frame #10 and shook the bees off these frames into the new colony.  Lots of bees went into the new nuc hive.  I would venture that many of them would be nurse bees and remain within the colony, many would be older foragers and would have headed off back to their original home.  All frames that were removed from the master colony had partially drawn comb frames inserted in their place.  Lots for the bees to do to keep busy.

It has been rainy yesterday and today, so now I sit and wait.  In a couple of days I will go into the old colony and see what is up with the three supercedure cells. It will be interesting to see what is going on.  The bees would have noticed within that hour that their queen was not present, this queen pheromone that the bees lick off her body is spread throughout the hive very quickly, bee to bee.  They would commence queen rearing immediately.  Their need to have baby bees is great.  I will see if they moved eggs into the queen cells that they had already started or if they build some new cells over eggs in which to raise their lady of the hive.  Yes, research, this will be an interesting year for surely.

This is all a good thing.  The bees from this colony will have believed that they had swarmed.  Their queen is gone and a good portion of their fellow hive mates are not present.  Hopefully this will help to prevent this colony from issuing a swarm.  Now, soon, I will add the second box, and this will keep them happy and swarm prevention has now been performed.  I think that Michael Bush would refer to this as a "cut down split".  Correct anyone?

I placed a screen in the front of the nuc colony to prevent robber bees from going in this baby colony and bugging them, they need this quiet time to get their wits about them, raise lots of babies and carry on to be a healthy and productive member of the apiary.  I wish them well.

Have a wonderful day, great life, and best of health wishes to all.  Cindi

[Brian D. Bray]

Outstanding documentry.  Please keeps us advised with 2nd episode soon.  All of us will be especially interested to find if the bees move eggs or larvae into the 3 queen cells or build new cells over existing larvae.  You have a good shot at documenting a situation that has been the basis of arguments between beekeepers for centuries.  If you are positive there were no eggs in the queen cells.

[Cindi]

Brian, I actually took some digital pictures of these three queen cells.  They were certainly not the best pictures, I enlarged them when I downloaded to my computer, but still could see any eggs, they appeared empty.  I would think that if there were eggs present, it would show up with the camera's view of data.  Now I have another job, to get into the colony and take some more pictures.  Thursday was the day that I removed their queen, saw the queen cups (with no visual eggs or larvae).  I will look again shortly (If weather permits) to see if there are eggs in these queen cups.  I will look deeply to see if they have made new queen cells, raised from the eggs that they will govern to be the queen of their hive colony.  Like I said, this is a year of discovery, a year of experimentation, building strong colonies, heading into next year with a vision of an actual honey harvest that would have paid off after three years of working with my bees, mistakes made, lessons learned, and the ability to raise bees, healthy and strong.

Yeah!!!!!  Have a great day, wonderful life, great health wishes to all and goodnight!!!!!!  Cindi
I have read over and over again, through the many readings that I have entertained, that the bees have the capacity to move eggs, at their will, to whichever place they wish these to be.  This does make sense, right?  As far as I could see, these queen cells had no eggs, nor larvae.  I will keep on with the documentation, this is my job right now, research, as you called it. 

[Cindi]

Great!!!  Today looks like the sun might shine enough to go into the overwintered colony to check the status of the queen cells. 

Backtracking a little, with my literature readings over the past couple of years, I truly get the understanding that the bees do have the capacity to move eggs, but not larvae, the larvae would be damaged if moved, the eggs are much tougher.  But it sounds like from what you are saying, Brian, that there is lots of controversy over this aspect of the bees' life.  Have a wonderful day, great life, love the life your livin', great health.  Cindi

[newbee101]

I have never heard that honey bees move eggs.
Are you hoping that they move them into the queen cups?
The Queen lays in the cups, and the bees raise the new Queens.

[Understudy]

Cindi,

That was an excellent report. I am interested in seeing how the nuc does.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

[beelover]

right a book next time

[Michael Bush]

>I have read over and over again, through the many readings that I have entertained, that the bees have the capacity to move eggs, at their will, to whichever place they wish these to be.

I have never seen any evidence that they can nor any studies that they can.  I have seen a few that concluded they could not.

[Cindi]

Rats!!!!  It has, after the weather early this morning almost promised that the sun would shine, has been a very rainy day, all day and is still raining.  It is my intention to check out this overwintered colony as soon as I can get a chance.  I am quite interested myself to see what is going on with the 3 supercedure cells.  They are in the middle of frame #7.

About the bees moving eggs.  Last summer I had a queen excluder on above the two brood chambers on one of my colonies.  I noticed eggs in the honey super above.  I spoke with the owner of the Honeybee Centre, where I had taken my some of my bee seminars and told him that I saw a few eggs.  He told me that if there were under 100 eggs in the super, probably the bees had moved them and the queen was most likely not up there.  She was not up there, I checked.  So....this leaves a lot of speculation in my eyes.  Who knows eh?  Have a wonderful day, great life, great health.  Cindi

[Michael Bush]

There are always laying workers in any hive.  The other workers simply police the eggs.  So a laying worker can lay eggs anywhere, regardless of the excluder, but they are usually cleaned up by the other workers.

Sometimes a queen goes through an excluder.  Especially if you smoke them heavily.  If she got through without coercion (smoke), she may go back on her own.

[Cindi]

There are always laying workers in any hive.  The other workers simply police the eggs.  So a laying worker can lay eggs anywhere, regardless of the excluder, but they are usually cleaned up by the other workers.
Sometimes a queen goes through an excluder.  Especially if you smoke them heavily.  If she got through without coercion (smoke), she may go back on her own.

Michael, now that is an interesting bit of information.  So that now brings a question or two to my mind.  If queen pheromone inhibits the worker bees' ovarioles from being developed, whey then would a worker begin to lay eggs?  That needs explanation, please elaborate.  I love to be taught things, and listen, and learn.

How can a queen "fit" through an excluder? 

Does the queen have the ability to "squish" her body flat enough to squeeze through?  Well, maybe I pretty much answered this one by myself, their exoskelton is pretty soft, I guess if she really wanted to go through she could.  The queen excluder probably just makes it a little bit more awkward for her to slip through, so under general circumstances, she wouldn't bother, she is too busy doing more important things.  Have a wonderful day, great life, great health.   Cindi

[Michael Bush]

>Michael, now that is an interesting bit of information.  So that now brings a question or two to my mind.  If queen pheromone inhibits the worker bees' ovarioles from being developed, whey then would a worker begin to lay eggs? 

Not true.  It's the pheromones from open brood that supress the laying workers from developing, but some do anyway.  It is NOT the queen pheromone as many of the older books suggest.

See page 11 of Wisdom of the hive:
"the queen's pheromones are neither necessary nor sufficient for inhibiting worker's ovaries.  Instead, they strongly inhibit the workers from rearing additional queens.  It is now clear that the pheromones that provide the proximate stimulus for workers to refrain from laying eggs come mainly from the brood, not from the queen (reviewed in Seeling 1985; see also Willis, Winston, and Slessor 1990)."

>That needs explanation, please elaborate.

Try a google search on research on "anarchistic bees".  They are ever present but usually in small enough numbers to not cause a problem and are simply policed by the workers UNLESS they need drones.  The number is alway small as long as ovary development is suppressed.

See page 9 of "The Wisdom of the Hive"
"Although worker honey bees cannot mate, they do possess ovaries and can produce viable eggs; hence they do have the potential to have male offspring (in bees and other Hymenoptera, fertilized eggs produce females while unfertilized eggs produce males).  It is now clear, however, that this potential is exceedingly rarely realized as long as a colony contains a queen (in queenless colonies, workers eventually lay large numbers of male eggs; see the review in Page and Erickson 1988).  One supporting piece of evidence comes from studies of worker ovary development in queenright colonies, which have consistently revealed extremely low levels of development.  All studies to date report fare fewer than 1 % of workers have ovaries developed sufficiently to lay eggs (reviewed in Ratnieks 1993; see also Visscher 1995a).  For example, Ratnieks dissected 10,634 worker bees from 21 colonies and found that only 7 had moderately developed egg (half the size of a completed egg) and that just one had a fully developed egg in her body."

[Cindi]

Michael, very interesting.  Who is the author of Wisdom of the Hive?  If you know that, could you please tell me.  It sounds like it is a book worth owning, I am a reader and if it is a great book, I am interested. 

I have heard of anarchistic bees and I am going now to google it, to understand.  Thank you very much for your clarification of a subject.   It is appreciated.  Wrong information is the worst to have in one's mind.  Have a beautiful day, great life and health.  Cindi

[Michael Bush]

http://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Hive-Social-Physiology-Colonies/dp/0674953762/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-0618169-7595139?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180103270&sr=1-1

It's by Dr. Thomas Seeley.

[Cindi]

Michael, thanks, I think that this book is one that I would love to add to my bee book collection.  Probably worth every penny.  Have a wonderful day, great life, and great health.  Cindi