A Winter Hive Loss

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.

--Richard

A Swarm Moves In

The queen bee doesn’t have any royal duties. Thousands of bees in her hive don’t even pay her much attention; a dozen workers attend to her. The rest of the workers go about tending to the hive, feeding the brood, and producing their future food supply. The queen just lays eggs and secretes pheromones, and her pheromones organize the colony. It’s quickly apparent to the bees if she’s gone. The queen, drones, and workers produce many pheromones as their principal means of communication. Most are aromatic scents that the bees detect and react upon. One pheromone the queen produces, that we call “queen substance,” is conveyed to the workers by touch rather than by scent. The queen secretes queen substance pheromone, and her retinue of attendants collect it by stroking her body. They pass the pheromone to other bees in the vicinity, and then it is passed from bee to bee throughout the hive. As long as queen substance is detected by the bees, the colony is content. If the queen dies, or the beekeeper removes her from the hive, the bees will know within one hour that she is gone by the loss of queen substance.

The amount of queen substance pheromone in the hive diminishes as it is divided among an increasing number of bees as the colony’s population grows in the spring. Reduced queen pheromone stimulates the workers to start building queen cells, one of the first steps involved in swarming. The queen lays eggs in these, and the workers feed the developing queens a high-energy brood food, called royal jelly. A queen will emerge from one cell to take over the egg-laying duties of the hive when the colony divides through swarming. Half of the hive’s bees and the older queen fly from the hive and gather nearby. Scouts, seen here, visit my swarm trap. They explore the cavity and find it suitable. In a day the swarm moves in, and I transfer it to a hive.

--Richard

A Bee Colony Starves

On a warm mid-winter day, a beekeeper observes numerous dead bees on the ground outside one of his hives. Inside the hive, he finds a small cluster of dead bees with many of the dead facing head-first into empty cells. A dead queen bee is located in the center of the cluster of bees. There is an empty supersedure queen cell adjacent to the cluster of bees with a trap door still attached, a tell-tale indication that a virgin queen has recently emerged. A queen that emerges in the winter is of no use to the colony because she will not be able to successfully mate with drones. There is no honey in the vicinity of the cluster of dead bees. A few capped cells indicate that the bees had been attending brood before the bees died. It appears that the bees died of starvation. With a relatively mild winter, the bees had been able to fly from their hive on a number of days; however, on their foraging flights, the bees hadn’t brought in enough food to meet the needs of their expanding colony.

Starvation is the greatest killer of honey bee colonies. They die because they don’t have food available to the cluster of bees. This often occurs even when there are ample stores of honey in the hive, but it is beyond the reach of the winter cluster. The cluster remains on the combs containing brood to feed and protect the fragile, developing bees. They eat the food nearby, as they did in today’s photo by George Bujarski. On prolonged periods of cold, the bees will not move throughout the hive to gather stored honey. Because honey bees share their food, they starve together. Since this colony exhibited no signs of disease, like American foulbrood, it will be safe for the beekeeper to reuse the hive and frames of drawn combs. He will protect the combs from hive scavengers till replacement bee colonies are available in the spring.

--Richard

Honey Bee Secondary Swarms

A Little Rock beekeeper captured a swarm and hived it in his Kenyan Top Bar Hive. Ten days later he checked on the bees and found the sizeable colony building combs and filling them with pollen and honey. The bees were gentle and their behavior was normal. Carefully inspecting the combs, the beekeeper found no eggs or larvae, however, he located a small queen in the hive. It is likely that the beekeeper captured a secondary or “after swarm,” a swarm emitted after a primary swarm. Beekeepers across the Mid-South have seen many primary and secondary swarms this year. The above normal number of swarms may largely result from this spring’s wet weather that encouraged profuse blooming of plants like the invasive privet shown being visited by a carpenter bee in today’s photo. Privet nectar fills brood nest cells needed for egg laying; this congestion leads to swarming.

As a honey bee colony prepares to swarm, it typically produces a number of queen cells. Then, when the colony divides and swarms, the old queen leaves with roughly half of the bees. The original hive is usually left with a sealed queen cell for a queen to emerge, mate, and remain in the hive. If the hive emits one or more secondary swarms, they will contain virgin queens. All virgin queens need five or six days to mature after emerging as adults before their mating flights and another five or six days of further ovary development afterward before they begin laying eggs. A secondary swarm’s virgin queen will not be able to lay eggs as quickly as a primary swarm’s queen. After a secondary swarm moves into its new hive, its virgin queen must make mating flights before she can begin laying eggs. Thus, there will be a couple of weeks delay before egg laying begins in the new hive. Throughout this time the virgin queen emits pheromones that organize the colony in a similar fashion to mature, mated queens.

--Richard

Wrangling Movie Bees

When honey bees swarm, it is truly a fascinating and memorable event. Thousands of bees suddenly exit their hive and fly, circling in what appears to be complete disorder. After a few minutes, the bees converge in a loose ball of bees hanging from a nearby structure, often a tree limb. Honey bees festoon, or “hold hands,” with each other in the swarm; each bee’s six limbs is equipped with two hooks, well suited to grasp a tree limb or another bee’s hooks. The swarm remains in this unsupported state for a few hours or, sometimes, for a few days while scout worker bees search for a suitable cavity to serve as a permanent home for bees. Once a desirable cavity is found, the bees fly in mass to their new nest.

I had the pleasure of assisting Jeremy and Emily Bemis set-up a scene involving swarming honey bees for filming on a movie set. Jeremy and I opened a strong hive, and Emily spotted the queen. We placed the queen inside a small queen cage and carried it along with the hive and bees to the movie set, leaving behind one hive body to accept returning foragers. We wired the caged queen onto a cedar tree limb selected for the appropriate camera shot. Next, we shook and brushed all of the bees onto the queen cage. Natural swarms are held together by the pheromones of the queen and some of the workers. Soon, the bees festooned into a typical swarm shape around the caged queen. To keep the bees hydrated and lessen their flying, we periodically sprayed the man-made swarm with sugar water syrup. The bees performed their part in the movie as directed. Afterward, we returned the bees to their hive by placing the caged queen inside the hive and brushing in a large number of workers as well. Workers fanned their Nasanov gland pheromones to call the remaining bees. The photogenic bees returned home after dark.

--Richard

The Queen Excluder

The queen excluder is an important part of the modern honey bee hive used to separate the brood nest area from the stored honey. The device is simply a sheet of metal or plastic with openings sized to allow worker bees to pass through but block the larger drones and queen bees. A queen excluder is typically placed above the hive bodies that hold the brood nest. As many surplus honey supers are then placed above the brood nest as are needed to store the colony’s honey. The use of queen excluders offers several advantages to the beekeeper. First, with no brood being reared in the frames devoted to honey production, the honey is clean and free of eggs and larvae. The absence of brood in the honey supers means that there is little protein being deposited in the supers. The protein comes from pollen used to feed the larvae and from silk cocoons spun by pupae. It is protein that attracts hive scavengers like wax moths. Frames of beeswax honeycomb from honey production can usually be stored over winter without chemical treatments. They merely need ventilation. Frames that held brood are often damaged by wax moth larvae while in storage. Some beekeepers prefer to not use queen excluders; they even call them “honey excluders.” They feel that the bees produce more honey without a queen excluder in the hive. However, bees can easily be encouraged to move through the queen excluder to store honey in the supers by “priming” the super with a frame containing honey or even with frames of drawn comb.

Today, I found an "upside-down" hive, a rather rare occurrence. The brood was above the queen excluder; the honey below.  When the colony superseded itself, the new queen made its mating flights. When she returned to the hive, the queen, still quite small, was able to pass through the mesh of the queen excluder. I moved the queen and the brood down below the queen excluder.

--Richard

A New Queen Emerges

Still wet, fuzzy, and pale in color, the new queen bee walked slowly and wobbly away from the queen cell on the thirteenth day after I placed the frame of young brood in the bee hive. She emerged from the bottom of the peanut-shaped emergency queen cell that the workers built around a one-day-old larva. The workers were desperate to produce a new queen, but they lacked a suitable larva to feed royal jelly to begin the physiological changes that make a larva develop into a queen rather than a worker. Their brood nest was filled with honey in all available cells. The hive contained no brood, and the colony appeared to be hopelessly queen-less. Without a new queen, the colony would die in about six weeks, the life expectancy of a worker bee.

 Over a hundred years ago, L. L. Langstroth wrote that we can save a failing colony of honey bees by bringing in a frame of very young brood from another hive. I chose a frame of mixed brood having all honey bee stages: eggs, larvae, pupae, and newly emerged adults. The young adult bees have highly developed glands to produce the food needed to feed the rapidly growing larvae. The pupae will be emerging soon to help boost the population of the colony. The youngest larvae and eggs are potential brood to be turned into a new queen. Click on the picture of the brood frame viewed from the bottom. The newly emerged queen is passing empty queen cells built along the lower edge of the frame. Queen cells always hang vertically, while drone and worker cells are oriented horizontally on the brood nest combs. The emergency queen cell that housed this queen during her development is to the right, in the middle of the frame. Workers thinned the beeswax from the lower end of the queen cell to assist her exit the cell. After a successful mating flight, the queen will continue the colony’s reproduction.

--Richard

Handling Queen Cells

Honey bees produce queens in a cell that is the size, shape, color, and texture of a peanut. Queen cells are generally described as swarm cells, which occur along the base of the frame, or supersedure cells, which are found on the sides of the frames. There is no difference in the queens that the two kinds of queen cells produce. I look at them as a gift of the hive: queens that you can use to make a colony division or create a nucleus hive to hold a spare queen for emergency replacement. If you find a frame with a single queen cell on it, simply move the entire frame to a nucleus hive along with enough frames of brood, bees, honey, and pollen to support the queen. If you find a number of queen cells on a frame, you can carefully cut the extra cells off with a pocket knife. Cut wide around the queen cell. You will probably be cutting through worker brood cells. Place a queen cell inside a plastic queen cell protector and push the protector into the side of a frame of brood in a new hive. The queen cell must be oriented vertically, just as the bees produced it. At times, when you find queen cells, it is often after you have torn them open removing the frame. You can often gently replace the beeswax and the bees will repair the cell and save the developing queen.

The quality of any queen is determined by her genetic make-up, the nutrition she receives throughout her development, how successfully she is mated, and the genetics of the drones with which she mated. To ensure that our queens receive good nutrition during queen rearing, we plant a diversity of flowers near our bee yards where queens are raised and mated. Click on the photo to see a bee collecting pollen from turnips, mustard family plants that have been grown to bloom and produce seed.

--Richard

Queen Cells Appear

The first sign of a colony preparing to swarm is often the appearance of queen cells in the hive. By the time that these appear, the colony is about a month into preparations for swarming. Once the swarming process is started, it is difficult to stop. A number of techniques for reducing swarming have been developed. Some of the methods that we find to be effective are based upon measures to prevent the brood nest from becoming so filled that the queen does not have enough cells available for her to lay eggs. At Peace Bee Farm our swarm prevention methods involve carefully examining every hive in the spring and rearranging the hive bodies to move the brood nest low in the hive. This usually means moving the lowest brood box to the top. If the brood is high in the brood area, the bees seldom move down to use available space for brood production. Adding extra hive bodies for the brood nest and honey supers also helps insure that the hive is not crowded.

Honey bee colonies do not swarm until they have capped a queen cell, and thus provided a new queen to leave behind as a mother for the existing hive. Some beekeepers attempt to stop swarming by removing the queen cells. However, this is usually not effective. They may not find all of the cells, and removing them only delays the swarming by about four days, the time it takes for the bees to create and cap a new queen cell. Expanding the brood nest to free-up empty cells for the queen to use for laying eggs may help. Making a colony division, an artificial swarming process, is the most effective method of preventing swarming. The division can be made by moving a cell to a new hive body along with enough bees, brood, pollen, and nectar to support the new queen. Unlike worker and drone cells, which are oriented horizontally, peanut-shaped queen cells hang vertically.

--Richard

Marking a Queen Bee

Being social insects, honey bees share in the duties of the hive. Each individual does not perform all of the daily tasks of the hive. The workers assume different roles and perform the needed colony tasks. The worker bees’ roles change as they age. As these bees age, their various glands develop; and they change in their ability to produce brood food, secrete beeswax, produce an effective sting, and perform various tasks. For this reason, the workers pass through a series of tasks throughout their life. Among the shared tasks performed by the bees are cleaning of the nest, feeding the brood, feeding and tending to the queen, guarding the hive, secreting beeswax, building honey comb, cooling the hive, moving honey and pollen about the hive, foraging for nectar and pollen, and curing honey.

While the honey bee colony shares in collecting, preparing, and storing food, tending to the hive, and feeding and caring for the brood, the colony also employs a common means of reproduction. A single queen bee produces all of the eggs that will become the population of the colony. The male bees, the drones, serve a single role. The drones mate with queen bees. Since the drones never mate with queens inside the hive, they add genetic diversity to surrounding colonies. The queen bee is more likely to be mating with drones from various distant colonies. Since the population of the colony and its success is dependent upon one bee, the queen, she is of utmost importance to the colony. Many beekeepers mark their queens to be able to match the colony’s traits to an individual queen. Honey bee colonies regularly replace their queens through a process called supersedure. If a queen bee is found in the hive without the appropriate marking, it is likely that the queen has been superseded. In the photo, Shirley, Mike, and I are marking a queen bee with a dot of paint on the bees’ thorax.
--Richard

Honey Bee Health Studies

It has been three years since the start of the greatest recorded die-off of honey bees in the United States. With annual losses of managed honey bee hives at around 30 percent, there is still no clear, single known cause of this condition, known as CCD, or Colony Collapse Disorder. From a long list of possible causes of Colony Collapse Disorder, a shorter list of possible causes has emerged. The first candidate for a CCD cause to be eliminated was electromagnetic energy from cell phone towers. Strong candidates for possible causes still remain: colony stress resulting from nutritional problems, transportation of hives for pollination service, chemical residues from fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, and new or re-emerging bee diseases and pathogens. Researchers have found traces of many chemicals in the beeswax honey comb of hives that collapsed as well as in those that did not. Beeswax readily holds chemicals; and some of the chemicals were introduced into the hives by the beekeepers to control parasitic mites, while some of the chemicals were brought into the hive by the bees as they picked them up while foraging for pollen and nectar.

Peace Bee Farm is participating in long-term studies that are now being conducted to measure the effects of three areas of concern. First, honey bee diseases are being studied, particularly new viruses and fungal diseases. Second, parasitic mites, the great killers of honey bees, are being sampled. The mites are known to vector numerous viruses. Third, pesticides are being sampled from the beeswax honey comb and from bees. Click on the picture to see where I am cutting comb from the brood nest for the pesticide test. Any chemicals present in the beeswax comb here surround the developing honey bee brood. The queen bee, marked in red, is encircled by her retinue of attendant worker bees. For these studies, we are collecting samples of beeswax and bees.
--Richard

Summer Hive Inspection

In the summertime, hive inspections are made less frequently. Because the honey supers are placed atop the hive bodies, it may mean moving hundreds of pounds of equipment just to get to the brood nest. By August, the hives have between two and six medium-size honey supers in place. Each super may weigh up to sixty pounds. The heat and humidity in the Delta are true limiting factors in the beekeeping task. Still, there are times when it is necessary to look into the brood nest and evaluate the hive. If there are dead bees on the ground in front of the hive or a lower than normal population of bees inside the hive, a thorough inspection hive is made. This year’s excessive number of rainy days made for some sporadic nectar flows. Some nectar producing plants just didn’t produce nectar during their bloom period simply because the cloud cover reduced photosynthesis. During these times of dearth, some bees, particularly those of Eastern European lineage, revert to survival instincts and stop brood production. These cool-climate races of bees survive during long winters and nectar dearth by stopping brood production, which consumes large amounts of food.

Click on the photo, taken in the brood nest of a hive showing a low population of bees in the honey supers. There are plenty of bees in the brood nest area. All three castes of bees can be found: workers, drones, and the queen. A drone is in the upper, right quadrant; the queen, marked in green, is to the left of center. Capped brood, holding pupae, is present; but there are no eggs or open larvae to be found. It appears that the queen has not been laying eggs for at least nine days. This colony should survive. With a strong nectar flow from fall wildflowers, or my supplemental feeding of sugar syrup, the queen should start laying eggs again and replenish the colony population. This year’s honey crop will be diminished, though.
--Richard

Martins and Drones

At Peace Bee Farm, we enjoy the purple martins for half of the year. These largest of the swallows arrive in February, nest in artificial gourds that we provide for them, rear young birds, and then leave without fanfare in July. During the six months that they occupy the farm, they entertain us daily with their song, which is almost speech, and their flight, which some describe as aerial acrobatics. Anyone who has observed these popular birds knows their ability to climb, dive, and soar can’t be matched by other birds. They can regularly be seen sweeping along the surface of lakes or soaring hundreds of feet in the air, catching insects in flight. When they approach their nest, they dive at great speed. It is not uncommon for us to see drone honey bees chasing the martins as the birds circle their nesting gourds or sweep in for a landing. Sometimes a single drone follows a martin; at times half a dozen drones will be in close pursuit. The drones, which normally pursue queen bees in their mating flights, have no trouble keeping up with the rapid, turning flight of the martins. Click on the photo and you can see a number of drones that followed the martin all the way back to the perch above their nesting gourds.

The purple martin is an insect eater and a very efficient gatherer of flying insects. It is obvious that our martins frequent the drone concentration areas and bring back drones visually focused on the zooming birds. I don’t know how many drones and queen bees are eaten by these birds along the way, but I do feel that the birds are doing their part to eliminate weak drones and queens from the mating areas. If this is the case, the martins are helping select for stronger honey bees. The martins will spend the next six months in the Amazon River basin. I wonder if their other home is a similar bee farm in the Southern Hemisphere.
--Richard

A New Queen Bee Emerges

While examining bee hives, I found one colony in need of a new queen. Every hive needs a healthy and productive queen. Without a highly productive queen a colony cannot grow to the size necessary to produce a surplus of honey or effectively pollinate crops. Honey bees never help out other colonies that are in trouble, but beekeepers regularly do. I looked in a nearby hive for a frame of young brood to borrow and add to the weak hive. I hoped to find brood at the youngest larval stage that the bees could use to raise a new queen. On day four of development, honey bees can create a queen bee by feeding the larva a diet of royal jelly. However, I couldn’t find any brood of the proper age.

With a strong nectar flow, the hive had become honey-bound; all available cells were filled with honey. The bees filled cells that the queen would normally use for egg laying with incoming nectar, a common occurrence this year. I did find a fully developed queen cell on a frame, which I decided to move to the colony in need of a new queen. A colony will usually accept any queen that emerges in its hive. After carrying the frame by hand a short distance to the new hive, I gave the queen cell a final inspection. The cell was empty; the queen had emerged while I held the frame in my hands. Click on the picture to see a new queen, one minute old. The hair on her body still appears wet. On the frame from the honey-bound hive she walks past cells of capped brood on the left. The cells of recently emerged bees have been immediately filled with honey. The darker area to the right of the queen is fully-ripened honey in cells capped with beeswax.
--Richard

The Queen's Retinue

Honey bees, being social insects, require extensive communications to conduct the life of the colony. Most of the communication is accomplished by chemical odors that the bees detect. These chemicals which control the behavior of the bees are known as pheromones. Most of the pheromones are volatile odors which pass through the air and are detected by the bees. At least one of the most important pheromones for controlling the colony is passed among the bees of the hive by touch. This pheromone is called “queen substance.” This pheromone stimulates brood rearing and foraging by the honey bees. It is a sex attractant, and it determines when replacement queens are produced. Queen substance helps stabilize swarms of honey bees, and it affects the behavior of the queen’s attendant bees.

The queen bee’s attendants, known as her retinue, surround her at all times. These worker bees feed her, groom her, and remove her waste. One thing that can readily be observed is that the bees of the retinue regularly stroke the queen’s body, usually along the abdomen, with their legs and antennae. What they are doing is collecting the queen substance pheromone that the queen secretes and passing it along to the other bees in the hive. If the queen is dies or is removed from the hive, the colony will know of her loss within an hour by the lack of queen substance. They will begin queen replacement within four hours. If you click on the photo you can see a young queen, marked with green, being surrounded by a retinue of at least 22 worker bees. The retinue can be identified because the attendant bees usually face the queen in a circle. They pose like football players in a huddle.
--Richard

A Drone Laying Queen

For a queen bee to be worthwhile to the colony, at least three things must have come into play: She must have come from good genetic stock; she must have received adequate nutrition throughout her development, and she must have been mated with a number of healthy drones. If a queen does not lay a large number of eggs, she will not be able to sustain the colony’s population. If the colony recognizes that the queen is weak, it will replace her in a procedure called supersedure. In supersedure, the colony raises a new queen which takes over the egg laying after killing the old queen. If the colony does not recognize that their queen is not laying enough eggs, the colony may weaken and die. Generally, queens that lay a large number of eggs each day produce large amounts of pheromones which provide the organization of the colony.

As we examine the nucleus hives containing the new queens, we are constantly looking for indications of the quality of the queens. In the picture we see a queen who looks large and healthy; however, her brood pattern is very poor. There is a random, spotty pattern of brood with drone cells surrounded by empty cells. The queen is the bee in the lower center with a wasp-like abdomen and a dark, shiny thorax. I suspect that this queen reached the point following its emergence as an adult at which it would normally make mating flights only to find the daily rains prohibiting flight. Queens which don’t make the mating flights lack sperm and cannot lay the fertile eggs necessary to produce workers or queens. They produce drones from infertile eggs. Drones alone cannot sustain a colony. This queen will have to be replaced.
--Richard

Not All Queens are Good

We evaluate the queen bees in the queen mating nucleus hives. This allows us to know what the condition of a queen is before placing her into a full-size hive for pollination service or honey production. It is important that the queen is laying a large number of eggs and placing them in a tight, continuous pattern on the frames. A good queen will lay in excess of 1500 eggs per day. This level of egg laying is necessary to produce a large enough population of bees to produce some surplus honey. It is the beekeeper’s job to ensure that each colony has an acceptable queen.

While checking new queen bees in the mating nucleus hives, I found this one. The colony was gentle and still well populated with bees that I had placed in the hive when I established this nucleus colony. However, there was no evidence that the queen was laying worker brood. Only drone brood was found. Capped drone cells stand taller than worker cells and look like bullets on the frames. Click on the photo, and you can see the queen in the lower center. While she looks healthy, she was probably not properly mated in the days following her emergence as an adult. Rain falling on a number of consecutive days could have prevented her from making her mating flights. Without sperm, the queen could only lay infertile eggs which produce drones. If left in place, this colony would be doomed to dwindle away. I will replace this queen.
--Richard

Evaluating New Queen Bees

As social insects, honey bees share the responsibility for the reproduction of the entire colony with two types of bees, queens and drones. Each colony has one queen, and she lays all of the eggs for the entire colony. The success and condition of the entire colony is largely dependent upon the condition of the queen. Reproduction in honey bees is accomplished by the queen, a female, mating with a number of male bees, drones. Typically, the queen will mate a few days after she emerges as an adult bee. The event is a series of flights in which she mates in the air with between 12 and 20 drones.

There are a number of factors that determine the quality of the queen. The success of the mating flight is one. The genetic make-up of the queen is another. A third is the nutrition that the queen received throughout her development and after her emergence as an adult. Each of these factors combines to determine the condition of the brood that the queen produces. Another factor affecting the brood production is the genetics of the several drones that mated with the queen. Whenever we examine the nucleus hives housing the new queens, we are evaluating her condition. We look for behavioral conditions like gentleness, how rapidly the queen produces brood, and the bees’ resistance to diseases and pests. Much can be told about the condition of the queen by examining the brood pattern. Click on the photo to see an excellent brood pattern of capped brood. This is a large area of continuous brood with very few empty cells. The capped cells contain the third stage of the developing honey bees, the pupa.
--Richard

Young Geese and Queen Bees

Just as fresh strawberries in the farmers market are a sign that spring has arrived, life abounds on the farm. Today, while I was checking queen mating nucleus hives, located close to one of the Peace Farm lakes, a pair of wild Canada geese swam in close for a look. They were accompanied by their two new offspring. Today was the first day that the birds brought their young out into open water. Geese produce their young in March and April. They seem to ensure their survival by overwhelming the predators by having their offspring at the same time. The springtime births also ensure that there will be strong birds capable of migrating in the fall. We try to accomplish the same tactic in the bee yard that the Canada geese take on naturally. We encourage the bees to increase their numbers in the spring. We raise as many queens as we can in the spring while conditions in the hives are most conducive for the bees to produce queens. Hopefully, we can overcome predators, parasites, pesticides, and other maladies to be able to produce enough healthy bees to make a surplus of honey to feed the bees throughout next winter.

The small hives in the foreground are queen mating nucleus hives. The entrances of each hive face in opposite directions. This orientation helps queen bees returning from mating flights to enter the proper hive. If a returning queen enters the wrong hive, it will be detected as an intruder and killed. The bricks on the tops of the hives hold the covers in place during wind storms and nighttime visits by raccoons. The bricks also provide the beekeeper a hive condition code at a glance. The alignment of these bricks tells me that these hives each hold an egg-laying queen.
--Richard

The Queen Bee Makes a Mating Flight

The queen bee is responsible for producing all of the eggs for the honey bee colony. Unlike organisms that mate again and again for the production of each offspring, the queen honey bee mates but once for a lifetime of egg laying. This occurs in a series of mating flights which typically occur over a day or two about five or six days after the queen’s emergence as an adult. During these flights, the queen bee will mate in the air with between twelve and twenty drone bees. She will store the sperm from these flights in an internal organ for the length of her life. This sperm will be used to produce fertile eggs to produce either workers or queen bees. She also lays non-fertile eggs to produce drones. By mating with a number of drones, the queen is assured of bringing genetic diversity to the colony’s offspring. Some of those diverse genes may be just the ones needed for the colony to survive in a changing environment.

I happened to be checking the queen mating nucleus hives on the day that a number of young queens were making mating flights. It appeared that the queen from this colony was outside the hive at the time I was checking it. I found no queen in the hive. The bees on every frame appeared to be fanning air with their wings across their raised abdomens. This is done to blow a plume of pheromones out through the air to guide bees to the hive. In this case all of the bees were involved in guiding their queen back home. Click on the photo and see the bees at the top of the hive’s frames posed to fan pheromones. While the bees look disturbed and disorganized, they were actually quite calm. The fanning by the bees shows the importance to the entire colony for the success of the mating flight. I feel like this is the most unique photo that I have taken inside a bee hive.
--Richard