While honey bees do not fly in cold weather, they do venture out of their hive on the occasional warm winter day. Bees make cleansing flights and forage for nectar and pollen from early-blooming flowers. Observing the bees’ flight at the hive entrances, one hive showed less flight activity than adjacent hives. The warm day allowed for an inspection of the evidently weaker hive, revealing a small population of bees with brood present. However, all of the brood was drone brood, no worker brood. Drones are produced from infertile eggs, and workers are produced from fertile eggs. And colonies typically don’t produce drones in the winter. It appeared that some of the workers had developed working reproductive systems and had become drone layers. Workers typically don’t lay eggs, however when a hive has been queenless for a period of time, some workers start laying infertile eggs. It appeared that the colony was dwindling in population without a queen producing workers.
Looking deeper into the hive, I found the likely cause of
the colony’s population decline and drone laying. I found a queen cell with the
side wall chewed out. It appears that the colony attempted to replace its queen
during the winter through supersedure. Honey bees in the Mid-South can only
produce viable queens from April through August. The queen cell shown here has
not been opened at the tip where a queen would emerge. Instead, it was chewed
out through the side. A virgin queen emerged in the hive, found this developing
queen, and stung her to death through the side of the cell. Workers later chewed
through the cell wall and removed the remains. Beekeepers need to be on the
lookout for wintertime colony losses and take measures to protect the combs. I
stacked the frames of this hive atop the frames of a strong hive. Those bees
will protect the combs, and a colony division in the spring, when queens become
available, will restore the hive count.
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