Piping & Quacking Virgin Queens.

What’s Going On?

On 24th May I find that our big strong colony has decided to make queen cells in preparation for swarming. They have planned on the old queen leaving with around 10% of the colony to set up home somewhere else. I decide to take the old queen out and place her in a nucleus (small hive) box with 4 frames of brood, bees and food stores and I take them to another apiary over 3 miles away for a couple of weeks. This is so that the flying bees don’t come home to the original hive and deplete this small colony. The usual procedure is to leave one queen cell in the original colony and knock down all the rest. A drawing pin is placed in the frame above that chosen cell. A week later the beekeeper would go in and knock down any additional queen cells made over the past week, leaving the chosen cell intact. After this time, there are no more eggs or unsealed larvae for the bees to make new queens from.

Curiosity

The weather has been cold and wet for a couple of weeks and I wonder if perhaps the bees might change their minds about swarming. I’ve taken away half their brood leaving them only 4 frames of brood. I’ve not knocked down any of their queen cells because I want to know what they will do if left to their own devices this time. Normally I would knock down queen cells as above.

Primary Swarm With Virgin Queen

The answer comes on my way home from teaching beekeeping near Dumfries, around 5 hours drive away. I’m coming up over the Slochd Summit in Highland region when a call comes through from husband and bee-minder, Linton. He tells me about a collection of bees on a shrub in the apiary. Initially I think, great, the queen has been on a mating flight and some of the bees have collected on the shrub planning to go home again later. Linton, however, is not a bee-listener’s husband for nothing and notices that some of the bees are waggle dancing on the swarm. Yikes! these bees are definitely a swarm debating the new home.

Swarm Caught and Hived

I arrive home an hour or so later to find the swarm hived in nucleus box, our house vacuumed, and tea on the table! I’m thrilled to bits, but first I check the hives and put my ear to them all. In the strongest colony, I hear the piping sound of a newly emerged queen and the answering quacking from several queens held prisoner within their cells by worker bees. This is a strategy to prevent all the virgin queens emerging at once and killing each other. For, if the colony decides to send out after-swarms they need virgins to go with them. The workers add more wax to the ends of the queen cells thus preventing the virgin queens from opening the cells and emerging. If they are not going to send out an after-swarm then all the virgins can emerge and fight it out among themselves, with the surviving queen assuming role of new queen. The workers may also tear down unwanted queen cells exposing the virgins which are stung by the first queen out. Worker bees don’t usually kill queens but they might suffocate dying queens by balling them in a mass of bees.

What Next?

My bee-buddy Cynthia wants another colony so I call her next day and invite her over to make up a mating apidea (small mating nucleus box requiring only 300 bees and a virgin queen or ripe queen cell) and rescue some virgin queens. I remove all the queen cells because I know that there is already a virgin queen in the hive. I let a couple out of their cells to run onto the frames because Ted Hooper says in his book Guide to Bees & Honey that a colony will not send after-swarms in this situation. These measures are preventing an after-swarm. The deal is, Cynthia brings the fondant to feed the bees in the mating nuc. I go to get the kit expecting that I will need to melt bees wax and secure strips of unwired foundation in the apidea etc, but the small nucs are all ready for use. I remember now that my bee-friend, Stewart Smith, borrowed them last year but I never noticed that he returned them in such good condition till this morning. A smile lights up my face and I make a mental note to thank Stewart.

Job done! -and now?

We place the mating nucs (with closed entrances) in cool dark sheds for three days to allow the bees to settle and make wax to draw out the foundation. They have ventilation and I spray with water every day, a small amount. It is cosy in these tiny nucs and the fondant will provide the energy needed to stimulate wax glands. In a few days the queen will be ready to fly and take mating flights. She may take several flights and will mate with several drones (7-20). Current research suggests a higher number and there are records of 77 drones mating with a single queen. Small wonder she doesn’t fly again unless it is to swarm in a year or so!