Queenless colonies
Signs and management of being queenless
Marking and raising queens
Basic Assessment: Describe the signs of a queenless colony and how to test a colony is queenless
The bees start looking for the queen (Q) after she has been absent for 15–20 minutes. Some bees become more mobile inside and around the entrance, more frantically than usual. They may fan.
Increased noise — an outcry
After 24 hours, reduced foraging (not easily noticeable)
The colony may become aggressive
After 48 hours, queen cells (QC) are visible
After 76 hours, there will be no eggs
If the queen stops laying eggs for five days and then dies, the youngest brood is older than day five, so the colony cannot make a new queen - it is hopelessly queenless.
After nine days, there is no open brood and plenty of emergency cells.
After 21 days, the colony dwindles.
After many weeks, laying workers produce eggs, several in each cell. Since the eggs are not fertilised, they develop into drones. Drone brood is too large to fit neatly in worker cells, so the cell walls become stretched and the cappings become domed.
Queenless Movement Behaviour (QMB) — My nomenclature. This describes how bees react to queen loss.
For example, if an inspection is prolonged beyond 20 minutes, the bees in the box without the queen become more mobile. If the queen is lost, bees sometimes wander around the hive entrance. That doesn’t last long. However, the running behaviour continues inside the hive until they have a new queen. When bees cover the frames, it is impossible to see QMS. To circumvent this, I put an unused frame feeder on the hive and watch what happens in the feeding walkway. The behaviour soon ceases after a new queen emerges from her cell. Research by Dimitrios Kanells et al. reported that increased mobility ceased three hours after re-queening.
Bees run around when stimulated, for example, by sugar syrup or, like ants, when their home is disturbed. I’ve taken some videos to illustrate their behaviour. Please use your desktop to spot Queenless Movement Behaviour. Click on the box icon to magnify the view. If you use your tablet you will be disappointed, miss the action and only notice my poor photography.
Calm bees taking syrup
They have recently finished taking some sugar syrup but have not forgotten it was there.
Queenless Movement Behaviour. A few days later the queen had emerged and the feeding walkway was empty. Click on the box icon to enter full screen.
The bees are taking an interest in each other. They are not using the available space to perform runs; some bees are assuming an intimidating posture. They are reacting to a threat like the hive roof being removed.
When bees are cramped together, it is difficult to see their mobility pattern.
(1) General excitement due to sugar syrup. Bees are slipping on the perspex cover. Note the presence of the queen. Feeding is associated with waggle dancing, protruding proboscises and shortish runs.
(2) Fourteen minutes after I saw the queen in the feeder walkway, she was dragged in to the hive. Her legs were wiggling. Her abdomen looks short.
Bees demonstrating QMB
When the bees are steady on the comb, and you see the queenless shake you can be sure the colony is queenless.
To determine whether a colony is queenless look for QMB, confirm the result using a test frame
Test Frames
To confirm that a colony is queenless, place a frame of brood that contains some eggs into the hive. If QCs form, the colony is queenless.
However, the result may be misleading when the colony has recently swarmed because the swarming urge lingers. So even if a young mated queen is in the colony, QC arises.
A colony with laying workers will not produce QC.
Laying Workers
Basic Assessment: Describe the signs of laying workers and a drone laying queen.
Under normal conditions, a small group of workers lays about 7% of the unfertilised eggs in colonies. These laying workers are 0.01% of the worker population. Other bees immediately cannibalise the eggs. When the colony is queenless, laying workers are given the colony’s approbation. In their enthusiasm, they may lay multiple eggs per cell. Since their abdomens are shorter than the queen's, the eggs are often placed on the cell walls.
Management of Laying workers - three options
I’ve no experience yet, but this is what people recommend.
Remove their hive and tip all the bees out in your apiary so they join other colonies.
Feed them frames of open brood, which provides them with brood pheromone; keep giving them brood until the colony makes a queen. The bees in the queenless colony will be old foragers rather than nurse bees, so the colony will take several weeks to get going, and even so, their new queen may be second-rate.
Carry the hive as far as possible from its home position, say 50–100 meters. Dump the bees on the ground. Place a frame of eggs in the home hive. If they do not make queen cells, consider them a lost cause and proceed as option one.
@ Crown copyright - multiple eggs per cell due to laying workers
Queen loss tends to arise in the active season. It is rare at other times. If you do regular inspections, you can intervene before laying workers. Give the colony a frame of eggs or unite them with another colony.
Raising Queens - the basics
I do not have much experience, so this section is skimpy. Doing things at the right time is important, so write a calendar. I have read that some beekeepers have great difficulty in getting queens adequately mated, most likely due to poor weather. Defer queen breeding until the weather is likely to be kind. Generally, in southern England, queens do not mate reliably in May, let alone April. Our variable weather doesn’t help.
Methods depend on removing the queen so that workers create emergency QC. But Q raised from worker eggs or day five worker brood are inferior to swarm and supersedure cells. So these queens are at risk of early supersedure.
The alternative method is grafting.
Day 1 larvae are lifted and put in wax or plastic cups. The larvae are placed in a desperately queenless colony (the starter) and then grown in a strong queen-right colony (the finisher), where they are looked after like supersedure QC. Grafting is an advanced technique, a skill, not just knowledge. Some people say the Cupkit cups (see innovations) should be sprayed with sugar syrup the day before grafting. Others graft day one larva on a pool of royal jelly rather than empty cells. Most would carefully keep the grafts damp with a bit of towelling, The skill of grafting is like throwing a clay pot. Some beekers will have better results than others. A few attain the skill immediately, but most get wobbly results.
“Swarm” eggs are larger than worker eggs (nobody knows how). Eggs are selected to become QC when they are three days old. So, whilst grafted queens make excellent queens, they are not as top-notch as they seem. Eggs laid in small colonies are large, so if you know the queen’s temperament, it would be sensible to use them.
6 a. Starter colonies
A starter is one where they have a colossal drive to make loads of QC. The hive is full of young bees, bags of food, syrup, and pollen supplements. After 24 hours of being queenless, insert the larvae or eggs.
How to get larvae
Manipulate your breeding queen so that she does not have anywhere to lay. Then provide her with some lovely fresh comb on unwired foundation or little plastic Jennter/Cupkit cups. The bees start emergency cells within 12–24 hours.
Once you have your frame of eggs/4 day larvae, control which cells they use to make QC. This can be achieved in several ways: isolate small groups of larvae (I’m not sure how many), by obliterating whole lines of cells, perhaps make little notches in the lower part of the cells where you want the bees to draw out QC.
You might cut a comb of open brood into a zigzag pattern so that day 4 larvae are situated along the edge of the cut. Bees will obligingly draw out cells from the edges — a sort of Miller method. Then reduce the number of larvae and then place the frame in the top of the hive — Hopkins method. This requires custom support for the frame and some way of shortening the lugs. Destroy queen cells that are too close together.
Look in daily if starting out with eggs. You need to know when eggs “hatch”. If the starter is strong, and you do not want oodles of Qs, use a colony as a starter and finisher.
6b. Finisher
The QC are nurtured, whilst protected, above the QE in a strong colony, and the Q underneath goes about her usual business. When QC are day 13–14, they are harvested. If you get the timing wrong and one Q emerges early, she will kill all the others, so all your hard work is undone.
Mating nuclei
If lots of Q are required, ripe queen cells or virgin queens are put in weenie nucleus hives so they can go out to mate.
Mini mating nuc and larger Nucleus hives being used for mating. © Crown copyright
Other
There is a queen cell punch technique, which is easier than grafting.
Plug cells containing eggs using pieces of dowel. Then, dust the brood frame with cornflower to kill the rest of the brood. Not easy.
One to five QC usually form in the top box of a Demaree. This is when using mediums throughout. If the colony was on a swarming trajectory, so long as the QC are harvested or destroyed, the colony will not swarm. Otherwise, sealed QC can be left in situ and harvested. The resultant queens may be okay, but their nutrition will not have been optimal if they have been competing with a lot of worker brood. Once all the brood is sealed in the top box practically all the bees migrate to the bottom box. Hence, when a Q emerges and goes to mate she lacks support staff.
This paper is not easy reading: For good queens — should we graft eggs?
6 c. Banking bees
Mated queens can be kept in small cages above the queen excluder in a queen-right colony. Workers feed them. The banked queens should have no worker companions.
Marking the queen
Use a “syringe” to catch her. With this, you creep up on the queen and nudge her into the tube with your finger. Put in the plunger and push her against the mesh. Wiggle the syringe around until she is in the correct position. The plungers are a loose fit and are prone to fall out.
A crown of thorns: place this over the queen. Use cool smoke to flush workers out and brush the workers away so that they do not re-join her. She can be difficult to see and it’s easy to mark a drone instead. The danger is that she can be crushed when you lower the cage. The pressure needs to immobilise her, but not enough to squash her sensitive abdomen or kill her.
Pick her up by her wings and transfer her to your nondominant hand and with a pincer grip hold her by her legs or thorax, Hazards include pulling or cutting off a leg, and dropping her. Hold her over the hive!
The queen is easily squashed in one-handed, and a hair clip device.
More information about queen marking
Drone Laying queens
Eventually, a Q exhausts her sperm stores, or maybe she never mated with enough drones. When this happens, she can only lay unfertilised eggs. To begin with, she may lay a mixture of fertilised and unfertilised eggs. So long as she produces brood, the workers live a merry life. If the colony still has plenty of young workers, remove the Q and, if necessary, give them some eggs so they produce an emergency Q or preferably give them a QC. Once there are laying workers, this approach won’t work.
Signs of a failing queen = a drone-laying queen. A mix of normal worker brood and drone brood in worker cells. Some cells are neatly grouped, but overall, there is a poor laying pattern.
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