Springtime Expansion

Honey bee populations expand rapidly in the spring. Prolific queens are stimulated to lay eggs at their maximum rate in April as flowers come into bloom in abundance. Hives fill with bees, and those colonies that do not have enough capacity make preparations for swarming. The same conditions that lead colonies to reproduce by division and swarming are the conditions that queen producers set up when rearing queens, and these newly produced queens are used to establish new colonies. Beekeepers regularly purchase colonies to expand their apiaries or to replace overwinter colony losses. They may purchase entire hives with their established bees, but more frequently they purchase nucleus colonies, “nucs,” or packaged bees like those awaiting delivery at the recent Bee Day event at Bemis Honey Bee Farm shown in today’s photo. Hundreds of previously ordered packages of bees and nucleus colonies were passed out to beekeepers from across the region.

Nucleus colonies are small honey bee colonies derived by separating frames from existing full-size hives. A nuc is a colony in equilibrium. It typically contains five frames of bees on combs with an egg-laying queen, brood, and bees. Since a nuc is an established colony with a queen and combs available for her to continue laying eggs, it is ready to expand in its new hive. A package of bees, on the other hand, is not an established colony when the beekeeper receives it. Typically, it is three pounds of bees measured by weight (approximately 12,000 bees). The bees in the package are not on frames. Included in the package is a queen bee in a cage with the queen separated from the rest of the bees for her protection. She is held in a cage with a candy plug delaying her release into her new hive. Over a few days, workers pass food to the queen and get accustomed to her pheromones while chewing through the candy, releasing her. Then, the bees are a family—a colony.

--Richard

Double Screen Board

Honey bees produce queens on three occasions: when the colony reproduces through swarming, when the colony replaces its queen through supersedure, and in emergencies when the colony loses its queen. We can make colony divisions and produce queens by setting up hive conditions for a colony to produce an emergency queen. Honey bees detect the presence of their queen by the queen substance pheromone that she secretes. This pheromone is passed through the hive by touch, unlike her other pheromones which are aromas carried in the air. The queen’s retinue of attendant workers constantly stroke the queen, gathering queen substance pheromone and passing it to nearby workers. The pheromone is passed from bee to bee throughout the hive. As long as the bees receive queen substance pheromone, the colony is content. If the queen is not present in the hive, the colony detects her loss within one hour and begins replacing her within four hours.

Beekeepers employ the loss of queen substance pheromone to perform colony divisions known as “walk-away splits.” They can accomplish the production of a new queen and make a colony division using a double screen board. This simple device is a board with two screens separated so that queen substance cannot be passed between hive brood boxes. When placed between the brood boxes of a strong hive with bees and brood on both sides of the screens, one half of the hive is content, and the other half feels that it is queenless and starts producing an emergency queen from a young worker larva. This larva is fed royal jelly throughout its development into a virgin queen. After its emergence as an adult, the virgin queen exits the hive for her mating flights through an entrance in the double screen board. She will begin laying eggs in about one month from the time of starting the procedure. In today’s photo workers return at the double screen board entrance with pollen to feed the new queen’s brood.

--Richard

Bees Identify Nest Mates

 

Drones are the male reproductive members of the honey bee hive. Drones perform no work in the hive and have but one duty: They mate with queen bees. In the Mid-South, colonies produce queens from April through August, and these queens mate a few days after queens emerge as adults. Since drones serve no purpose to the bees during the winter, colonies drive all drones from the hive in the fall. Removing non-working drones from the hive helps conserve winter food stores and ensure colony survival. There is one instance, though, when drones are not removed from the hive. Queenless colonies often retain their drones through the winter. While making a recent inspection of my hives, I found that most of the drones had been driven from the hives. However, one hive held a number of drones, a situation that calls for further investigation. Normally, beekeepers don’t need to find a queen, only evidence that the colony has one and that she is laying eggs. In today’s photo, we see the queen, a healthy, young queen, marked in blue. This queen was introduced into the hive in late summer, and she is laying plenty of eggs. A number of drones, bees larger than the workers, are visible in the photo.

 

An important part of our fall hive set-up for winter involves determining that every hive has enough honey to sustain the colony through the winter. With decreasing forage available for the bees to make honey, bees will readily rob honey from any hive if its colony is too weak to defend itself. Every hive is protected by guard bees that check bees attempting to enter. Bees not belonging to the colony are rejected by the guards. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found a mechanism for bees identifying hive mates. See https://phys.org/news/2020-10-gut-bacteria-key-bee-id.html?. They found that bacteria in the bees’ gut affects the odor of the bees’ exoskeletons. Guard bees identify bees belonging in their hive by their distinct odor.

--Richard

Making Queen Bees

Every honey bee hive has a queen, and only bees can produce honey bee queens. Queen production peaks in the spring when there are drone bees available to mate with the queens. Timing is critical in queen rearing. I assisted a group of Arkansas beekeepers who performed the steps required to produce a number of queens. Strong and healthy honey bee colonies reproduce on a colony-wide basis by swarming. Swarming is the culmination of a month-long process in which the colony divides and half of the bees fly away to find a new nest. One of the final steps in swarming involves the colony producing one or more queen bees. This natural process of producing queens was replicated by G. M. Doolittle more than one hundred years ago, and the Doolittle Method is used today to produce queens world-wide. This method requires beekeepers to establish a number of different hives for queen production with each hive set-up to accommodate a different step in the queens’ development. Typically, beekeepers establish queen-mother hives, queen-cell-starter hives, queen-cell-finisher hives, and queen-mating-nucleus hives with bees of the appropriate age and necessary food. This hive preparation is often a shared endeavor among cooperating beekeepers. Our early-April queen production effort involved six seasoned beekeepers.

On grafting day, we searched the queen-mother hives for one-day-old larvae to graft into queen cell cups. Worker bees tend to these young larvae and convert them into queen bees. We found that our first queen-mother hive had progressed in its natural manner toward swarming. The queen had stopped laying eggs, and day-old larvae were not available. We found four queen cells produced for swarming, like the one in today’s photo by Desmond Simmons. One queen was actually in the process of emerging as an adult. We used these queen cells to produce four additional colonies. Grafting continued successfully with larvae taken from other hives. At the end of the day we started the development of queens for two hundred new hives.

--Richard

Evaluating Queen Bees

Striving for continuous stock improvement, beekeepers evaluate the genetic traits of their queen bees to select their best queens as breeding stock. Observing the behavioral characteristics of the bees in a hive reveals its queen’s genetic traits. However, the queen’s genetic make-up is not the only factor involved in what we observe. Environmental conditions and the beekeeper’s actions also affect the honey bee colony. We can observe the bees’ behavioral traits and select for those traits in offspring as long as they are genetically heritable traits. For example, a honey bee’s hoarding instinct is a heritable trait that determines the bee’s intensity of foraging for nectar to make honey. The color, aroma, and flavor of the honey that the bees produce, however, is not genetically controlled by the bees. A bee hive’s honey production does have a genetic basis related to hoarding instinct. Environmental factors, like hours of sunlight, drought, and dearth of flowering plants greatly affect honey production. The beekeeper’s hive management actions greatly affect honey production. Since it takes a large population of bees to produce a surplus of honey, swarm prevention is important. Equally important for honey production is the beekeeper’s timely placement on the hive of honey supers prior to the nectar flow.

When we measure a colony’s over-winter survival success, we see the results of bees not having a genetic propensity for failing due to Nosema disease or tracheal mites. However, environmental factors like mild weather in the winter lead to excessive consumption of stored food. Likewise, old, dark combs left in the bee hive potentially hold environmental toxins and disease spores that adversely affect colony health by shortening the bees’ lifespans. The success or failure of a bee colony to survive the winter depends largely upon how the beekeeper set up the hive in the fall. Did he or she leave plenty of stored honey and provide sufficient hive ventilation? In today’s photo, an attendant worker passes royal jelly to her queen.

--Richard

Producing Honey Bee Queens

Twenty-four beekeepers attended my queen rearing class at Bemis Honey Bee Farm as part of our continuing beekeeping educational program. The beekeepers expanded their understanding of honey bee biology and bee colony reproduction. They learned the conditions under which bee colonies produce queens, including preparation for swarming. Before a bee colony divides itself and swarms, it produces a new queen to continue reproducing bees in the original hive. The hive conditions that lead to swarming are the same as beekeepers create to encourage bees to produce queens. The beekeepers learned the importance of record keeping and colony evaluation in producing high quality queens. By carefully observing a bee hive’s characteristics, beekeepers evaluate the queen’s traits. They then select hives with desirable traits to become “drone mother hives” which produce high-quality drones to mate with virgin queens. Hives that the beekeeper determines to be the best-of-the-best are designated as “queen mother hives” producing larvae to develop into high-quality queen bees. The beekeepers learned that to produce these high-quality queens three conditions are necessary: First, we must select from parent queens with good genetic traits; next, the queens must have good nutrition throughout their development; and finally, the virgin queen must successfully mate with a large number of high-quality drones. The beekeepers learned the actions to take to develop a queen-rearing program for continuous stock improvement.

The beekeepers followed the procedures involved in producing queen bees using the Doolittle Method of Queen Production, the method most widely used for producing queens throughout the beekeeping industry. G. M. Doolittle developed the techniques over one hundred years ago. Two beekeeper students employ the Doolittle Method in today’s photo. They are grafting tiny day-old larvae into queen cell cups that they will place into hives filled with workers selected for their ability to produce queens. The beekeepers move the grafted cells from a “cell starter hive” and then to a “cell finisher hive” and finally to a “queen mating nucleus hive.”

--Richard

Drone Questions

Swiss reader, Alexandra, writes a number of pertinent questions about drone bees and their role in honey bee reproduction. She asks, “How does a queen find drones for mating? Will they hang out near her hive until she comes out on her mating flight? Is the mating going on while in the air? Are these drones from various hives, or just from one? Does any mating occur with her own drones, who genetically would be her own children? Do drones die after mating? What are the drones doing all day before it’s time for mating flights? Why are drone eggs infertile? Why do workers need to be fertile? And, lastly, what happens if the bees have to stay home a few days, like in stormy weather?”

I’ll try to answer: Drones from many hives fly to spaces called drone concentration areas, DCAs, where they mate with queen bees in flight. Young queen bees fly to DCAs, usually more distant than ones occupied by drones from her own hive, making it unlikely for queens to mate with genetically similar hive mates. This helps prevent inbreeding, which results in inferior offspring. In the DCAs, drones seek flying queens by sight and pheromones. Drones die in the act of mating; usually more than a dozen mate with a queen. Alexandra questions the drones’ activity outside of their mating flights. Drones conduct no work; they eat honey and rest inside the hive. Workers and queens develop from fertile eggs, and drones develop from infertile eggs in a scheme, common among stinging insects, known as parthenogenesis. When queens make their mating flights, over a day or two, they collect a life-time’s supply of sperm from drones. The queens then self-fertilize each egg that they lay that is to become a worker or queen. If the queen lays an egg without fertilizing, it becomes a drone. Inclement weather can delay mating flights. Long delays result in sterile queens, like the drone-layer shown in today’s photo.

--Richard

New Findings on Queen Bees

Queen bees and worker bees develop from fertilized eggs, and drone bees develop from nonfertilized eggs. Queens develop from eggs laid in downward facing queen cell cups similar to the one on the side of a top bar hive comb (photo by Melissa Bridgman). A New York Times piece, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/31/science/honeybees-queens.html?,  describes recently published research from PLOS Genetics identifying a newly-identified mechanism involved in the development of queen bees. It has long been known that queen bee development is associated with diet. Worker bees feed developing queen bees and worker bees a different diet even though they both develop from the same fertilized eggs. The larvae of both queens and workers are fed an enriched food, royal jelly, in the first day of larval development. Worker larvae are then fed secretions workers produce from “bee bread,” a food consisting of fermenting pollen and honey. Queen larvae, however, continue to receive royal jelly through their larval development and throughout their life.

The new research finds that caste development, the differentiation of queens, which have a complete reproductive system, from workers, that are sterile, uses plant-based small molecules called microRNA. The study’s co-author, Dr. Chen-Yu Zhang explains, “The royal jelly and plant microRNA work together to affect caste formation.” It now appears that the plant-based molecules suppress the workers’ ovary development. This research expands our understanding of queen bee caste differentiation. It also reflects the interdependence of plants and honey bees. Flowering plants and bees have been co-evolving for the past 100 million years. Plants and bees share microRNA, a plant substance that affects bee development and a bee substance that is important in the development of certain flowers. Dr. Zhang explains that microRNA from bees can make flowers larger and more colorful. The authors relate that these microRNA molecules affect species in different kingdoms, such as plants and insects or plants and humans. Other experts reacting to the report expect that microRNA will emerge as a major area of research in human medicine.

--Richard

Mid-Winter Hive Check

Whenever the winter weather conditions are suitable, beekeepers examine their hives. An extremely mild Mid-South winter brought several warm days with temperatures rising above 50 degrees, allowing bees to fly from their hives and beekeepers to check them. If the temperature is barely above 50 and conditions are windy, one can only open the hives briefly. Extensive exposure can chill and kill brood. If somewhat warmer conditions exist, a more in-depth examination of hives is possible. We experienced several suitable beekeeping days in February. Any hive check involves looking for evidence of an egg-laying queen, ample stores of food, and signs of bee disease. A mid-winter check of hives revealed colonies with rapidly expanding populations. Queens were laying eggs in all hives; and while warm weather allowed the bees to fly and consume lots of honey, all of the hives held adequate food stores.

Hives with lesser populations of bees require particular attention. Examining one weak hive revealed a small population with no worker brood. I found the queen shown in today’s photo surrounded by a retinue of attendant workers constantly stroking her abdomen. However, the queen was damaged; her wings were incomplete. The queen appeared to be afflicted with Deformed Wing Virus, one of more than a dozen viral diseases commonly vectored by parasitic Varroa mites. A queen with deformed wings would have been unable to make her mating flights as a young adult. An unmated queen cannot lay the fertilized eggs needed to produce worker bees or queens. Without these bees, the colony is doomed to collapse. This deformed queen evidently emerged the previous fall. The workers in the hive were long-lived bees produced by this queen’s mother. Deformed Wing Virus affects drones and workers more frequently than queens. It is likely that a female Varroa mite entered the queen cell before it was capped, and then the parasitic mite transferred the virus to the developing queen pupa. Varroa-vectored viral diseases cause the loss of many honey bee colonies.

--Richard

Producing Queens

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

Rebuilding Winter's Losses

All of America’s bee colonies have been lost twice in the last six years. That is the effect of the 30 to 35 percent annual honey bee colony losses since 2006, the year Colony Collapse Disorder was identified. The Bee Informed Partnership’s “Winter Loss Survey 2012—2013: Preliminary Results,” http://beeinformed.org/2013/05/winter-loss-survey-2012-2013/, reveals, “On average, US beekeepers lost 45.1 % of the colonies in their operation during the winter of 2012/2013.” Beekeepers do not feel that annual colony losses of one third are sustainable. Surveys point to losses above 15 percent as being unacceptable. Beekeepers consider the labor costs and expenses involved in cleaning the hives of dead colonies and the resources consumed in rearing replacement queens and colonies. Anecdotal evidence indicates that individuals may experience losses well exceeding the average. One commercial pollinator states that he actually loses and replaces all of his colonies in a year’s time.

The USDA presents the report, http://www.usda.gov/documents/ReportHoneyBeeHealth.pdf, compiled from the October 2012 conference in Alexandria, Virginia of numerous stakeholders in honey bee health. These include honey producers, commercial pollinators, chemical producers, extension agents, researchers, and agents of the USDA and Environmental Protection Agency. The report provides an in-depth listing of current knowledge of honey bee health matters; and it offers a number of serious questions asking for further research. I hope that many of these will be addressed. The conference stakeholders address honey bee nutrition, pests and pathogens, pesticides, genetics, breeding, and biology. Best management practices are being explored. Teams of concerned stakeholders in honey bee health are gathering information, and beekeepers are working to rebuild colony numbers. Queen bees developing in queen mating nucleus hives will start new colonies to replace winter losses. A check of queen cells in today’s photo shows two queens emerged successfully from their peanut-shaped cells. The cell on the right remained closed; its queen did not emerge. The newly emerged queens will make mating flights and then begin laying eggs in two to three weeks.

--Richard

Queen Mating Flights

Queen bees mate in flight. In areas where Africanized Honey Bee genes are not prevalent, honey bee queens are allowed to mate with drones in the area. These “open mated” queens typically receive genetic material from between 12 and 20 drones when they fly into drone concentration areas. Having a large number of drones in the area insures that the queens will pass along to their offspring a great number of traits for survival in a rapidly changing environment. Beekeepers can increase the number of drones with desirable traits available to mate with queens by increasing the amount of drone comb in hives with favored traits. By adding frames of drone brood foundation, beekeepers can designate certain hives as “drone mother” hives. The process of drone saturation can lead to improved genetics throughout the bee yard when new queens are reared by the beekeeper or when colonies naturally supersede their queen.

New queens are being reared in mating nucleus hives as shown in today’s picture. The queens emerge as adults on day 16 after rapidly progressing through the stages of egg, larva, and pupa. After waiting five or six days in the hive in which their reproductive organs continue to develop, virgin queens make mating flights. It is important that the queens return to their own hive; they will be killed if they wander into another hive. The beekeeper can help insure the queens find their proper hive by randomly placing the hives and altering the hives’ appearance with paint color and patterns. Hives here are pointed in opposite directions to allow virgin queens to orient toward a particular mating nucleus hive. After the queens return from their mating flights, they wait another five or six days while their reproductive organs continue developing before they begin laying eggs. Feeding the mating nucleus colonies throughout the two weeks of development after the queen’s emergence is important. A strong nectar flow also helps ensure the queens receive adequate nutrition during their development.

--Richard

Raising Queen Bees

A honey bee colony can’t be any better than its queen. We evaluate queens by observing the traits of the entire colony. Strong, healthy colonies reproduce by swarming in the spring. Beekeepers encourage bees to make new queens by setting up hives in the conditions that lead to swarming. To produce high-quality queens, it is necessary for the bees to come from good genetic lines, have good nutrition, and successfully mate with a number of high-quality drones. Shirley Murphy and I are participants in the Tennessee Queen Breeders Association, an effort of the Tennessee Beekeepers Association to develop queen bees adapted for the conditions of the Mid-South. In today’s photo Shirley is installing a queen cell housed in a protective cage in a full-size hive that she is requeening. She presses the queen cell into the side of a frame of mixed-age brood to resemble a supersedure queen cell. Similarly, Ed Anderson cuts off extra queen cells from his best Hendersonville, Tennessee bee hive to requeen another hive. Their queens will emerge inside the hives. After they make their mating flights, they will likely replace the old queens in mortal fight between the queens. Most colonies will accept any queen that emerges as an adult within the hive.

Shirley is also adding queen cells to queen mating nucleus hives. A “nuc" is any hive with less than the full capacity of a bee hive. Nucs often hold three, four, or five frames. We made up five-frame nucs with two frames of mixed-age brood and nurse bees from strong hives. The nurse bees will feed and care for the larvae in the open cells. The pupae in the capped brood will emerge soon to provide young worker bees to care for the new queen when she emerges from her queen cell. For food, we include in the nucleus hive a frame of honey and a frame of pollen. One empty frame of drawn comb provides for expansion of the prospective colony.

--Richard

Last Chance for a New Queen

Honey bee colonies produce new queens as they need them through the spring, summer, and fall. The bees make new queens for supersedure, or replacement, of aging queens; or they make new queens to sustain the colony after it divides and swarms. Some races of bees, like the Russians, continue to produce numbers of queen cells throughout this time. The bees tear down the cells if a new queen is not needed in the hive at the time. Beekeepers produce queens during the same period by encouraging the bees to produce queen cells. The queen cells may be created by either grafting day-old larvae into queen cell cups or by non-grafting techniques. Today’s photo shows beekeepers practicing grafting at a University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service advanced beekeeping workshop in Little Rock, Arkansas.

In the Mid-South area, queens may be reared from May through August. An important element in the production of good queens is the availability of sufficient numbers of drones to mate with the new queens. If we attempt to produce queens too early in the spring, they are often of low quality because large numbers of sexually-mature drones are not available. The number of drones in the drone concentration areas is often reduced late in the summer, especially during times of dearth of nectar and pollen. At this time, the colonies produce fewer drones and sometimes remove drones from the hives. Late-season queens that are well mated with good drones make for prolific colonies for pollination service or honey production the following year. At Peace Bee Farm, we like to produce a number of extra queens to have as replacements for lost queens. If we detect a queen-less colony during a nectar flow, we can easily replace her by bringing in a laying queen housed in a nucleus hive. Once the two hives are combined using a sheet of newspaper to slow the merger of the bees, the colony can continue producing honey without losing population.

--Richard

Marking Queen Bees

After the new queen honey bee returns from a series of mating flights to the mating nucleus hive where she emerged as an adult a week earlier, she roams the combs for another week. Now, at about two weeks of age, the queen begins a life of egg laying. One queen is responsible for producing the entire population of the colony. The success of the colony depends upon the number of bees that she produces. The behavioral traits and many of the health characteristics of the colony are shaped by the genes shared by the queen and the drones she mated with. The organization of the colony as a social unit is built around the pheromones the queen secretes. If the beekeeper wants to control or improve the bee stock, it is important to identify the queen. Unless the queen is marked, there is no way to tell whether she has been replaced through supersedure. Colonies regularly replace their queen, often more frequently than the beekeeper realizes. Some races of honey bees continuously build queen cells as a survival strategy: A new queen is always readily available if needed. As long as the existing queen remains productive, laying plenty of eggs and producing ample pheromones, the extra queen cells are destroyed by the workers before new queens emerge.

The Russian queen held in a plastic marking tube was reared in a queen mating nucleus hive from a queen cell that I cut from the comb of one of my hives. By continuously evaluating queens, the beekeeper can choose ones that have the best traits for survival in the local region. Those are the queens one would like to have producing new generations of queens. This queen will be observed over her lifetime for over-winter survival of the colony, spring-time population buildup, behavior on the comb, brood pattern, honey production, and gentleness. The dot of white paint on her thorax will tell me that she has not been superseded.

--Richard

New Queens Emerge

A honey bee colony can be no better than its queen. Producing a good queen requires good bee genetics, nutrition, and successful mating with good drones. Queens may be produced in queen mating nucleus hives from larvae grafted from the beekeeper’s best honey bee stock or from supersedure or swarm cells found in existing bee hives. Queens may be produced entirely by the bees themselves if the beekeeper moves frames containing eggs and very young larvae and places them in a nucleus hive set-up to accept them. This nucleus hive is prepared a day in advance with frames of open brood, nurse bees, and frames containing pollen and honey. In this case, the hive may be considered a “walk-away” split, since it requires no attention by the beekeeper after it is set up. There are also non-grafting techniques for producing queens. Any of these methods area capable of producing good, productive queens. However, things can go wrong; and poor queens may result if conditions are not right. For example, the genetic mix of the queen and the drones she mates with must be well suited for the local environmental conditions. The nucleus colony must have adequate food to nourish the developing queen, particularly a diversity of pollens to provide all of the necessary proteins, vitamins, and minerals. There must be an adequate population of foraging worker bees to gather food if it is not supplied by the beekeeper. There must be plenty mature drones in the area for the queen to mate with. Finally, weather conditions must be suitable for the young queen to make her mating flights.

The first sign of the queen’s successful mating is the presence of eggs. Click of today’s photo to see a new, dark-colored queen that failed to develop into a productive egg laying “mother” for the colony. Actually she became smallest bee in the hive. Still, the workers are attracted to her pheromones and attend to her. She will be replaced.

--Richard

The Mating Nucleus Hive

Beekeepers typically produce their queen bees in small hives called queen mating nucleus hives. Nucleus hives are any hives that are smaller than full size bee hives. Honey bees produce queens anytime from spring through fall; however, they produce them in greater numbers in the spring. For the bees, this spring-time queen production matches their tendency to divide the colony and swarm. Beekeepers take advantage of the spring-time tendency to produce queens in order to expand their beekeeping operation or replace colonies lost over the winter. A queen cell is placed in a queen mating nucleus hive by the beekeeper two days before the queen emerges as an adult. Today’s photo shows a queen cell in a plastic protective holder, positioned vertically, pushed into the surface of the comb. The queen cell may have been developed from beekeeper-grafted larvae reared in a cell builder hive or produced by bees in an existing hive as a swarm cell or supersedure cell. Productive queens come from good genetic lines and receive complete nutrition and effective mating to high-quality drones.

The queen mating nucleus hive is a queenless colony set-up to care for a developing queen bee. The nucleus hive contains frames of nurse bees and brood. Capped brood contains pupae that will soon emerge as adults. These young adult workers produce food for the developing queen. Open brood emits strong pheromones to hold nurse bees in the mating nucleus hive. Frames of honey and pollen ensure the new queen receives nutritious food for proper development. After the virgin queen emerges from her cell as an adult, she roams the combs of the mating nucleus hive for five or six days. Then she makes a series of mating flights, mating in flight with 12 to 20 drones. Afterward, she flies back to the same nucleus hive. In five or six days, she begins to lay eggs. The beekeeper can then begin evaluating the quality of the queen in the mating nucleus hives.

--Richard

Locally Adapted Bees

Every geographic area has its own challenges for honey bees. The bees in different locals experience varied weather as well as pests, pathogens, and parasites. Honey bees that thrive in one area may not be able to survive in a different area. A number of beekeepers are attempting to rear honey bees in their own area rather than relying on bees purchased from afar. They feel that the locally produced honey bees stand a better chance of surviving in the local environment. Recognizing the importance of honey bees for crop pollination, the Tennessee Department of Agriculture is helping the Tennessee Beekeepers Association fund a program to rear queen bees. The queen bees will help supply Tennessee beekeepers so that they can fill vacancies in pollination needs.

In today’s photo, Kent Williams, demonstrates queen grafting techniques to Shirley Murphy. They transfer one-day-old larvae into queen cell cups, and then they move the cell cups to a cell builder hive. The cell builder hive is established by brushing a large number of bees from frames of capped brood. The bees are of various ages, and they may come from different hives. With a large population of bees, plenty of food, and no queen present, the bees in the cell builder have a strong desire to create a new queen. When these bees are presented one-day-old larvae, they will begin feeding them royal jelly to begin the physiological changes that make the larvae develop into queens. As the larvae are being fed, other workers extend the queen cell cup into a queen cell using beeswax. The queen is encapsulated in a cell shaped like a peanut shell and resembling in size, shape, and texture. Two days before the queen emerges as an adult, the queen cells are moved to queen mating nucleus hives holding bees to tend to the new queens. As the newly trained beekeepers gain experience in rearing queens, they will share their best stock to develop a hearty Tennessee bee.

--Richard

Joe-Pye Weed in Bloom

Joe-Pye weed is a late summer blooming wildflower found in damp ground along the edges of streams, ditches, and forest margins. I came across a patch of Joe-Pye weed in bloom in a marsh adjacent to a pond on our farm while watching a flock of gadwalls, gray, early-migrating ducks. Thin flocks of gadwalls, American wigeons, wood ducks, and green-winged teal can be seen in the Mid-South in September. The colorful Joe-Pye weed, a member of the important family of bee plants, the composites, often stands over eight feet in height. The composites, or sunflowers, are significant producers of nectar and pollen. Legends attribute the name of various species to a New England colonial-era Native American medicinal healer named Joe Pye. It is said that he treated conditions such as diarrhea, typhus, kidney stones, and fevers with the plants which now carry his name. One species of Joe-Pye weed, boneset, is thought to benefit in setting broken bones. This white-flowered plant is a major producer of nectar for late-season honey at times. Another Joe-Pye species with white flowers is white snakeroot, a poisonous plant. The flowering plants benefit from pollination by bees, and many serve as a source of medicine for humans and animals.

Late summer is an important time for beekeepers to observe the condition of their bee hives. In August, Chris Harrell noticed a change in activity in his Eastern North Carolina hive. Brood production had stopped. He found a number of queen cells that had been torn down from the sides. It appeared that the colony had superseded itself, and a virgin queen had killed the other developing queens. In his region, August may be the last month that a queen may successfully mate. Chris found young brood in September; it appears that the colony was successful in replacing its queen. He even found a young queen running rapidly across the surface of the combs. Virgin queens and young queens are often quite shy.

--Richard

One Queen at a Time

Queen mating nucleus hives reveal the workings of honey bee colonies on a small scale. These are the small bee hives where beekeepers raise queen bees. Mating nucleus hives are usually established by taking worker bees and brood from strong colonies and placing them in a box that holds less than the normal 10 frames. After remaining queen-less for about 24 hours, the bees in the nucleus hive develop a strong desire for a queen. When the beekeeper introduces a queen cell that holds a queen pupa almost ready to emerge into this queen-less hive, the bees readily accept it. The beekeeper counts the number of days that the queen develops in the queen cell and moves it to the mating nucleus hive one day before the queen emerges as an adult. Queen bees require 16 days to develop from egg to adult, and most colonies will accept any queen that emerges inside the hive.

Once the queen bee emerges, she begins searching for other queens in the hive. There may be other queens developing in the hive, and queen bees simply don’t allow competing queens to live in their hive. The first queen to emerge starts piping. Piping involves making a series of chirping and quacking sounds to call out to any other developing queens. Queen bees, still held in their own queen cells, respond to the piping. The emerged queen kills each of these potential competitors with her sting. In the photo, workers remove the dead queens from a pair of queen cells. They were killed by the first queen to emerge. If a queen successfully emerges from her cell, there will be a smooth, circular opening at the bottom; if the queen is killed inside its cell, a larger hole will be chewed in the side wall of the queen cell. After removing the dead queens, the workers chew down the queen cells. Without competition, a new colony is organized around the queen’s pheromones.

--Richard