The health and productivity of any bee colony is
dependent upon the condition of its queen. A productive queen that lays a large
number of eggs per day usually produces a large population of bees capable of
maintaining a healthy hive environment while managing many bee hive pests. Managing
queen bees has always been at the center of beekeeping. To maintain honey bee
colonies, beekeepers must be able to produce queen bees as needed. However,
only honey bees can produce queen bees. For beekeepers to encourage bees to
produce queens, they have to simulate the conditions in which bees naturally
produce queens on their own. Honey bees will produce queens when the colony has
lost its queen or when they are replacing a failing queen through supersedure
or when they are preparing to swarm. The beekeeper can produce some queens by
simulating the hive conditions that lead the bees toward producing queens. One
commonly used method uses a starter and a finisher hive to produce a number of
queen bees.
Bees produce new queens in the spring when the
colony is crowded with young bees, queenless, and well fed. These are the
conditions used in a starter hive to accept grafted larvae. Queens can be
produced by grafting very young larvae during the first 12 hours of the larval
stage. The queen cells in today’s photo have been cared for by the bees in a
queenless starter hive for one day. During this time, the bees have begun
drawing down the beeswax cell to house the developing queen, and they have
begun feeding the larvae large amounts of royal jelly which will cause the
larvae to develop into queen bees. After this first day’s development, the
queen cells are moved to a queenright finisher hive to continue their development.
Nurse bees in the finisher hive continue to feed the developing queen royal
jelly while other workers extend the queen cell downward. Twelve days after
grafting, a virgin queen emerges.
--Richard
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