Have You Wondered Why There Can Sometimes Be Multiple Queens in a Swarm?

[van from Arkansas]

Phil, you may be interested in the observations of, Langstroth; the Hive and the Honey-Bee.

To my knowledge Langstroth was the first to invent the observation hive with glass side, along with removable frames and nucs.  The man observed queens cells being protected from a previously hatched queen.  The bees would bite at the queen if she approached to keep her away from the viable queen cells thus protecting the virgin queen still inside.  This made possible afterswarms.

Of further interest, Langstroth also noted virgin queen killed in the cell had there cell cup completely removed leaving no trace whereas a successfully hatched queen the cell cup was only partially removed leaving an acorn cup in place.  Therefore one could count the acorn cups to determine how many queens were successfully hatched.

These are not my observations, conclusions nor ideas.  I am portraying what Langstroth wrote in his book, in 1853.  I would highly recommend this book as Langstroth is truly the father of modern day beekeeping.  Prior to this man, bees were kept in a hive with a side door that when opened exposed only a single frame and the frames were removed one at a time as if turning the pages of a book.  Further, there were hives of various sorts that resulted in killing the bees to obtain honey such as the well known skep hive.  Langstroth envisioned a hive that opened from the top with removable frames, I.e. the hive still used today.
Blessings

[Ben Framed]

Phil, you may be interested in the observations of, Langstroth; the Hive and the Honey-Bee.

To my knowledge Langstroth was the first to invent the observation hive with glass side, along with removable frames and nucs.  The man observed queens cells being protected from a previously hatched queen.  The bees would bite at the queen if she approached to keep her away from the viable queen cells thus protecting the virgin queen still inside.  This made possible afterswarms.

Of further interest, Langstroth also noted virgin queen killed in the cell had there cell cup completely removed leaving no trace whereas a successfully hatched queen the cell cup was only partially removed leaving an acorn cup in place.  Therefore one could count the acorn cups to determine how many queens were successfully hatched.

These are not my observations, conclusions nor ideas.  I am portraying what Langstroth wrote in his book, in 1853.  I would highly recommend this book as Langstroth is truly the father of modern day beekeeping.  Prior to this man, bees were kept in a hive with a side door that when opened exposed only a single frame and the frames were removed one at a time as if turning the pages of a book.  Further, there were hives of various sorts that resulted in killing the bees to obtain honey such as the well known skep hive.  Langstroth envisioned a hive that opened from the top with removable frames, I.e. the hive still used today.
Blessings

Yes Sir I will, (should have already),  read it.  As I recall Mr Langstroth was a minister. Come to think of it, you are the person who told me about Brother Adam. last year. He also being a man of the cloth?
Being we are on the subject about the bees locking down the virgins in certain cases, and this information being new to me, I am wondering what Alan may expect in his unique situation? I find this situation that he has found to be very interesting. 20 beautifully capped queen cups and just days BEFORE the solstice.  I am wondering what the bees will do in this unique situation. I feel certain that weather conditions along with other considerations will play a factor? There are several possibilities? A grand opportunity for us here to learn together. i very much appreciate Cao, Jim and Alan and all concerned for sharing this information as well as information that shall unfold concerning this event. It is almost exciting to me to learn of the results.
Thanks,
Phillip

[van from Arkansas]

Let?s say Santabee Claus has been good to Cool this Christmas.  Yes Langstroth was a Catholic Priest as Brother Adam.  Langstroth in his book made excellent connections of the uniqueness of the honey bee being intelligent designed by our CREATOR.

Langstroth refers to a friend as a fella named Huber.  Huber was blinded in his mid twenties but keep beekeeping with the eyes of a very intelligent observer.  Huber is the only blind beekeeper I know of.  Both were convinced drones were created from unfertilized egg whereas workers were fertilized.  In 1850 this was not understood and argued by the bee wizards of the time.
Blessings

[Ben Framed]

Let?s say Santabee Claus has been good to Cool this Christmas.  Yes Langstroth was a Catholic Priest as Brother Adam.  Langstroth in his book made excellent connections of the uniqueness of the honey bee being intelligent designed by our CREATOR.

Langstroth refers to a friend as a fella named Huber.  Huber was blinded in his mid twenties but keep beekeeping with the eyes of a very intelligent observer.  Huber is the only blind beekeeper I know of.  Both were convinced drones were created from unfertilized egg whereas workers were fertilized.  In 1850 this was not understood and argued by the bee wizards of the time.
Blessings

Thank you Mr Van for the very interesting information. Good stuff! Mr Langstroth was far before his time.  I am grateful for his insight and teaching of the still excellent way of keeping bees, frames, boxes and all. I should be ashamed for not already reading his book. 
Blessings,
Phillip

[Michael Bush]

Whenever I have found a lot of queens in a swarm most if not all were virgins.  I have watched swarms merge over time and one swarm often sets of other swarms in a beeyard.  In the end, as Winnie the Pooh always says "You never can tell with bees"

[Ben Framed]

Let?s say Santabee Claus has been good to Cool this Christmas.  Yes Langstroth was a Catholic Priest as Brother Adam.  Langstroth in his book made excellent connections of the uniqueness of the honey bee being intelligent designed by our CREATOR.

Langstroth refers to a friend as a fella named Huber.  Huber was blinded in his mid twenties but keep beekeeping with the eyes of a very intelligent observer.  Huber is the only blind beekeeper I know of.  Both were convinced drones were created from unfertilized egg whereas workers were fertilized.  In 1850 this was not understood and argued by the bee wizards of the time.
Blessings

Mr Van, I have read somewhere that a worker bee can also lay drones? I am thinking I read that here earlier this year or sometime last year, but my memory is foggy.

[Michael Bush]

Langstroth was not a Catholic.  He was a congregational minister.  Dzierzon, who was also one of the really important fathers of beekeeping was a priest.  Huber never figured out that drones came from unfertilized eggs.  That was the discovery of Dzierzon.  Huber figured out virtually everything else about bees that matters to a beekeeper.

Huber started losing his sight at the age of 15.  Hard to say when he reached the point of being "legally" blind but he was blind enough that his wife's father would not allow her to marry him.  She held out until she was of age (25) and married Huber anyway with her maternal uncle giving her away at the marriage.

[van from Arkansas]

Langstroth was not a Catholic.  He was a congregational minister.  Dzierzon, who was also one of the really important fathers of beekeeping was a priest.  Huber never figured out that drones came from unfertilized eggs.  That was the discovery of Dzierzon.  Huber figured out virtually everything else about bees that matters to a beekeeper.

Huber started losing his sight at the age of 15.  Hard to say when he reached the point of being "legally" blind but he was blind enough that his wife's father would not allow her to marry him.  She held out until she was of age (25) and married Huber anyway with her maternal uncle giving her away at the marriage.

Ya, Huber was bling in his twenties by means unknown to me.  Yes, his girlfriend still married Huber although he was blind.  I thought Huber was 27, but does that really matter.  The Fathers of Beekeeping in the 1800 discussed/argued the genetics of honeybees.  At the time it was a anybodies guess.  The most important issue was the creation of removable frames from a top loading hive, still used today as designed by Langstroth.   He was Catholic as a boy then changed to conventional preaching after marriage, but not an issue to me.  Whatever, he was a man of faith.
Blessings

[van from Arkansas]

Whenever I have found a lot of queens in a swarm most if not all were virgins.  I have watched swarms merge over time and one swarm often sets of other swarms in a beeyard.  In the end, as Winnie the Pooh always says "You never can tell with bees"

I have little experience with swarms, but I have read the above as stated the same by many others to which I considered bonafied beeks.  Also,  As BenFramd previously posted, David at Barnyard Bees has a video with 9 queens in a single swarm.  From paint marked queens that are clearly seen in David?s video, clearly some of the 9 queens were mated.  Thanks again Phil for the reference to Barnyard Bees.
Blessings

[Ben Framed]

Your welcome Mr Van. I Have to believe that there may still be unsolved mysteries about bees that have not yet been learned and unlocked. Such as wash boarding. (Last I heard)
Back to David, Nine mated queens in one swarm.  We have had some good answers here. Even still I can not help but think there may be more to the mystery.  David is a professional beekeeper. He sells many queens, packages etc each year; He and his partner Jimmy. One thing is for sure, David knows the difference in mated queens and virgins. His income from bees depend on it. He also owns a beekeeping supply company. Folks from several states come to his open house coffee and bee chat that He, Jimmy and crew occasionally put on several times throughout the year there in Chatsworth Georgia. He has over 100,000 YouTube Subscribers. He promotes good common scene beekeeping.  I know he does not know everything about bees, no one does. But he certainly knows queens. I really appreciate each and every comment that has been added to this topic. With each comment I have learned more than I knew before. Thanks friends for your replies.
Sincerely,
Phillip 

[van from Arkansas]

Mr Phil, sense you thirst for knowledge pretaining to our lil sweet friends, the honey bees.  Let me explain a problem facing the scientific community trying to breed for bees that can resist Varroa;

Some say trying to breed and create hygienic bees to resist Varroa is like trying to breed for sheep to resist wolves.  The reasoning is the honeybee is very unique in two aspects;
1.  Multiple drones mated to a single queen.
2.  Rearranging the DNA.  The technical name in reassembling recombinant DNA.  The honey bee is almost at the top of all species for scrambling and rearranging the DNA.

So in practical terms, IF I were to succeed in breeding for a honey bee that bites and kills Varroa mites, having control mating of both queen and drones with offspring that bite Varroa on site, the queens generated from the very offspring would scramble the genetic info that codes for mite biting rendering the effects useless in the second generation. 

Few animals compare to the honey bee when it comes to mutations or gene recombination.  Honeybee are mutating machines compared to most life.  Almost all species including most insects have a X and a Y chromosome which codes for a male or female offspring.  Rather simple.  But not the honeybee, there is no such simple order for sex determination.  Sex is determined by a completely different process.  Add to this the queen mates with multiple drones and you have a recipe that could give Einstein a headache.  Einstein decided to study simple stuff like nuclear physics which is much easier than honeybees.  Piece of cake to develop a nuclear bomb than to understand the genetics of a honey bee which is only just begun.

I hope I made myself clear, don?t hesitate to ask?  The point is rather simple: honeybees are so complex.

Blessings to All.
Van
Van

[Ben Framed]

Mr Phil, sense you thirst for knowledge pretaining to our lil sweet friends, the honey bees.  Let me explain a problem facing the scientific community trying to breed for bees that can resist Varroa;

Some say trying to breed and create hygienic bees to resist Varroa is like trying to breed for sheep to resist wolves.  The reasoning is the honeybee is very unique in two aspects;
1.  Multiple drones mated to a single queen.
2.  Rearranging the DNA.  The technical name in reassembling recombinant DNA.  The honey bee is almost at the top of all species for scrambling and rearranging the DNA.

So in practical terms, IF I were to succeed in breeding for a honey bee that bites and kills Varroa mites, having control mating of both queen and drones with offspring that bite Varroa on site, the queens generated from the very offspring would scramble the genetic info that codes for mite biting rendering the effects useless in the second generation. 

Few animals compare to the honey bee when it comes to mutations or gene recombination.  Honeybee are mutating machines compared to most life.  Almost all species including most insects have a X and a Y chromosome which codes for a male or female offspring.  Rather simple.  But not the honeybee, there is no such simple order for sex determination.  Sex is determined by a completely different process.  Add to this the queen mates with multiple drones and you have a recipe that could give Einstein a headache.  Einstein decided to study simple stuff like nuclear physics which is much easier than honeybees.  Piece of cake to develop a nuclear bomb than to understand the genetics of a honey bee which is only just begun.

I hope I made myself clear, don?t hesitate to ask?  The point is rather simple: honeybees are so complex.

Blessings to All.
Van
Van

Mr Van, Our sweet lil bees socked it to me today!! My fault, cloudy and I had just read your and iddees response about opening hives on a cloudy day!! I had it coming!  I was not interested in, nor had intended on doing an inspection as it was a little cool for a complete inspection, although they were very active and flying abundantly. I was walking through on of the yards,  and at the spur of the moment, decided to open one of my gentle hives for a quick peek, ( they are all usually gentle ), Well sir, for the first few seconds all was well, plenty of bees to be seen and as I was about to replace the top, BAM! Haa haaa that is what I get!   
Yes now I need to wear sunglasses. Three pops to the left eye area.  Missed getting a stinger out. Looks like I went a round with Smokin Joe Frazier 

Thanks for posting the science behind our little friends genetics, You explained the science very well. We all are steady learning it seems, sharing information both learned and experienced.  Thanks again for you sharing you knowledge on the subject.
Blessings,
Phillip
.

[van from Arkansas]

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Bee sting, oh no.  Your not alone Phil.
Blessings

[Ben Framed]

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Bee sting, oh no.  Your not alone Phil.
Blessings

Poor fellow! Looks like smoking Joe got him too! Lol

[incognito]

Some say trying to breed and create hygienic bees to resist Varroa is like trying to breed for sheep to resist wolves.  The reasoning is the honeybee is very unique in two aspects;
1.  Multiple drones mated to a single queen.
2.  Rearranging the DNA.  The technical name in reassembling recombinant DNA.  The honey bee is almost at the top of all species for scrambling and rearranging the DNA.

Few animals compare to the honey bee when it comes to mutations or gene recombination.  Honeybee are mutating machines compared to most life. 

I hope I made myself clear.

Van,I know that you have advanced knowledge regarding the science of honeybees. I do not doubt what you say, but the rationale escapes me. And I do realize that you condense your knowledge in you posts due to our limited attention span for scientific details.


We know that species develop defense mechanisms like camouflage, spikes, venom, tough skin and the like to ward off predators - small and large. So it seems nature will breed a sheep to resist wolves - let's assume for sake of discussion that mountain goats are descendants of sheep (or more likely descendants of some common descendant) that can travel terrain where wolves cannot.
Otherwise we need to concede that unless there is already a strain of honeybees equipped with everything to survive the mite, without human or divine intervention, honeybees will either become extinct due to varroa or mutate in some manner.

Luckily for the honeybee, they are mutating machines so the latter path could be the result.


It seems to make little difference if they mate once per offspring over 3 or 4 years with the same gene pool of multiple males, or once per lifetime with the same males with the same number of offspring produced over 3 or 4 years. (All species need to overcome mutation resistance due to the time it takes pre-mutation offspring to reach reproductive age.)
It was theorized in other posts that aggressiveness is more influenced by the male ancestry. In this case we would hope that varroa resistance is more influenced by female ancestry for the mutation to dominate sooner.

So why is it that we cannot help the gene pool down the fork in the road that we are hoping for? Doesn't that imply that they are more resistant to mutating than likely to mutate.

[Ben Framed]

Mr Van is well learned in genetics of bees. I would venture to say that his deep studies are far more intense and complex than many here, if not all here, as he has went far and beyond the average beekeepers realm of research for a specific reason. We who have been here for at least a year, know that he has went to the next level of queen rearing and advanced to the science of AI or II . He has made it his business to intensely study the genetics of this wonderfully complex creature. I trust that Mr Van, though he has not came out and said it, is hoping to develop the super bee, the ultimate bee, and is striving for just such a bee as we all would desire, in other words, he knows what he is talking about, a bee that is truly mite resistant. He has made a bold attempt, in layman's words to explain the complex genetic makeup of the honey bee. And the reasons that the mutation of such is so very complicated.

Unrelated but I will add,  Myself being a country boy, kind of understand what he is trying to get across. Dogs for instance are also complicated. As a boy we had bird dogs, for hunting quail. We had beagles for hunting rabbits. We had labs for the desire to jump into freezing water to retrieve a duck or goose. Border collies for herding abilities. We could have crossed of these breeds and no telling what you may get from each litter? Some pups may want to run rabbits and some may try and point birds. Some may try and heard a rabbit. lol
Same with horses some make excellent cow horses, some make smooth riding horses as the Tennessee Walker. etc.

With the thought of every strain of bee without mite resistance traits, and breed a perfect bee, all other bees would hypothetically need to become extinct in order to keep from crossbreeding. Cools explanation of India sounded like sound theory until Mr Van brought to our attention that the survivors were from a different strain of bee that was already present in India.  This topic has and is proving to be very interesting. Food for thought.

[van from Arkansas]

Thank you Phil for the kind words, much appreciated.  You have an ability to see the light through the tiny cracks in the wall.

Incognito, you have read well and responded in such a way I was hoping for.  In a word, APPLIED.  By applied I mean you digested the info, understood and then APPLIED logic to respond.  Your Mountain Goat analogy is well understood.  I?ll address later...below.  Agreed, the drone appears responsible for the genetics that code for defensive behaviors and the conclusion was hopeful for a queen to mutate to create resolve,,,,helping the gene pool down the road.  This is my highly condensed version of your well thought out response excepting your last paragraph to which I will address below.

Regarding my recombinant dna post, I did not point out deliberately I might add that some genes are CONSEREVED.  The word conserved meaning they DNA does not change, does not mutate or at the least, is very rare for the CONSERVED regions to be altered.  The best example I can think of is the aggressive nature of the african honey bee which has maintained the aggression for decades.  Obviously the dna is CONSERVED for the african honey bee.  With humans the conserved regions of dna are being patented for future hopes of vaccine in humans which was the attention of my focus prior to retirement.  BTW, all my patents were submitted in the name of my employer, US Govt, NIH/NIAID.  We all own the patented DNA that I submitted.

So, agreed, Incognito, we can certainly help the gene pool of the honey bee as BenFramed pointed out, I have been working on for years.  There is progress, but the process is painstaking slow.  My mites drops are slowly dwindling but still to be considered invasive.

The Mountain Goat may well have been Natures answer to wolves resisting sheep as well as mans influence to favor dog strains that protect or herd sheep.  I kinda combined incognito and BenFramed statements into the supportive single previous sentence.

Thinking of the aggressive genes being maintained by the drone and hopes for queen dilution I think of the african lion where the female posses genes to greatly reduce the size of the male and only MALE offspring.  African male lions bred to female tigers produced offspring in the 750 pound range. Double the size of either cat.  I make no statements regarding the morals of the tiger lion assay other than to say I would not participate in such abuse of nature.  So again, agreed there is indeed excitement of a honey bee evolving resistant to Varroa by means of mutation by either or both sexes.
More later.,,

Van

[van from Arkansas]

Info for all.  First, let me say BeeMaster is my only means of communication with beeks.  I do not look at other bee sites, nor Facebook, nor Twitter.

I was taught when addressing the public that I will lose 10 percent of my audience for each scientific word, or latin, I use, further I will lose another 10 percent for every mathematical formula I present.  The public is not impressed with multi syllable Latin terms.

So, I put forth a lot of effort to text without the use of latin terms and I have concerns my efforts sometime may be to vague as to cause confusion.  My apologies.  Please do not hesitate to correct an error or to ask further explanation.  The goal is common on BeeMaster: to better the bees.

I have learned so much on BeeMaster, I try to give back what I have received.  The small hive beetle is almost absent in Montana were I used to live.  When I moved to North Arkansas I was stunned by the beetles and basically had zero knowledge of the small hive beetle.  I turned to BeeMaster and you folks saved my hives.  It was a close one.  Many thanks to you.

Blessings
Van