The following is an excerpt fromEric and Joy McEwen‘s new bookRaising Resilient Bees(Chelsea Green Publishing July 2023 ) and is printed with license from the publisher.courtesy of Chelsea Green Publishing
In our earlybeekeepingdays , we join the Southern Oregon Beekeepers Association . Among the otherwise quondam rank was one youthful , enthusiastic , and forward - cogitate individual : John Jacob of Old Sol Apiaries , located in nearby Rogue River , Oregon . John is a pioneer in rearing queens from survivor stock — from love bee that forgo treatment for ascendance of varroa population and subsist to tell about it . Like our former efforts , John ’s labor experienced much criticism , and his queen were initially dubiously receive . At the fourth dimension , breedingqueensof any kind was not a exploit being undertaken in Oregon to any significant extent due to the much colder and bedwetter springiness than the neighboring State to the Confederate States . Furthermore , queens raised from lines that were not the product of extensive melodic line cover with bees of known parentage were watch as deficient . But John was a meticulous perfectionist . He taught us and others about the trick behind a well - reared king and the methods demand to faithfully produce one , and Old Sol became the main rootage of young genetics into our isolated operation for many years .
One of the wise to thing we ever learned from John was the innovation of the full natural queen - rearing endeavor : understanding why bees set up queens in the first place . What is the impulse that bees are responding to when they raise a pouf ? What triggers their efforts ? Can these condition be reduplicate ? And if so , can they be replicated in a style that systematically stimulates the nurture of salubrious , vigorous poof ? The king we had buy over the year made it cleared that the condition of queen raising could be carry out ill ; John proved to us that there was a better direction .
One reason a dependency will initiate queen put up is copiousness . When anectar flowis on and the beehive is fulfil with nectar at a very fast pace , a colony may be overflowing with both unseasoned bees and the shop require to support them . These positively charged weather incite the bee to set up new poof in anticipation of swarming . One measurable factor that contributes to the swarm impulse is hive over-crowding . As the forager require an ever - increase amount of time to bump house bees to whom they can channel their consignment of nectar , it becomes a cue to the dependency that it is appropriate to initiate swarming . As you might expect , an abundance of both foraging and youthful hatching bees are the conditions required to produce a superscript queen .
The other reason a hive will raise a young queer is the absence of queen pheromone . When a queen ’s pheromone levels are failing and the bee detect that her productivity is coming to an end , they will initiate the production of new queen . Likewise , bee will note an addition in the incidence of a queen laying unfertilized eggs in worker cells , a sign of eat up spermatozoon computer memory in her spermatheca . Oftentimes a supersedure cell produced in a tumid colony that is aware of a fail queen can be of high-pitched quality as well , but the quality of the queen produced under these portion is very dependent upon the beehive ’s morale , wellness and the fence environmental conditions , such as nectar flow and accessibility of pollen . Learning to mimic both triggering conditions at the same time in your queen - rearing process is the paint to produce superscript quality poof .
The summons by which bee put up a new queer begins when the bees initiate pouf cell production : the construction or modifying of a cell to accommodate a queen larva of importantly large size . The dependency will typically rear multiple queen cells at once , to increase the chance of winner . In the case of an ageing or abstracted queen , this process is regulated by the reduction or absence of queen pheromones in the hive . In the case of emergency queen raise , within a sidereal day of a complete absence of queen pheromones the bees will have get down to select suitable candidate eggs and larva , tearing down prole - sized cell walls in preparedness for construct queen cells .
courtesy of Chelsea Green Publishing
When bees rear multiple queens , workers have some influence on the episode and timing of the queens ’ emergence . Workers may take larvae up to 3 days old , as well as the most late lain eggs , allowing for as much as a 5 - 24-hour interval difference in old age between pansy . Worker bees can also manipulate the emergence rates of virgin queens by adding or removing wax from the operculum cap of the pouf cellphone at the end of pupation . When this occurs , in concert with magnetic variation in when the egg were position by the poove , it can result in the egression period extending over almost a week . This appendage typically result in the bearing of multiple Virgin in the colony at once , at which dot the beehive becomes an sphere of activity . Virgin queen expose conduct such as quacking , tooting and moving throughout the beehive , all of which elicit a answer from the prole . The queen who receives the most attention from the worker usually prevails as the sole reproductive female .
We sometimes see additional fresh queens come out into colonies whose first virgin queens have already undertaken mating flight . This natural variation in timing adds resilience to the queen - lift operation by insure the presence of “ back - up queen ” in the event that an former Virgo the Virgin is suffer while mating ( a not - uncommon occurrence ) .
When a queen is nurture artificially via the graft process , a cap world-beater cell is placed into a queenless mini - colony arranged in a raw box for this intention ( typically referred to as a “ mating core colony ” ) . The front of a mature queen cadre and the pheromone emanate from it inhibits the colony ’s inherent aptitude to rear extra queens . This leaves the colony with only a single chance to successfully nurture to maturity a new reproductive queen , spend a penny the dependency vulnerable to environmental result and dependent on the quality of that human - reared Virgo king . It is unfeigned that if the colony rejects the cellular telephone straightaway while there are still eggs and young larvae present , the karyon colony can undertake the process of rearing a new queen . But unless the nucleus dependency was intentionally prepared with this in mind and contains ample egg and young larvae from which to select , a sub - optimal outcome is likely .
