🐝 Beekeeping For Everyone! - #4 - Honeybee Queen - part 1

The queen her highness? Maybe not. Last post talk about the castes of the honeybee colony. This post will delve into more details on the honeybee queen.

As previously discussed, the queen is raised from a fertilized egg and the larvae is feed royal jelly the entire time it is growing. This allows for the queen to fully developed and be sexually mature. All other females are stunted and cannot reproduce.

Is the Queen in charge?

Remember, we gave her the moniker of 'Queen', not the bees. We also associate the name queen to be part of the hierarchy that is in command. Bees think differently. Although the queen is the only one who can produce viable offsprings, which are the life blood of the colony and it's future, she is not the supreme ruler. The worker bees care for the queen and feed her. They determine when it is appropriate for her to be raising brood and will change her diet as needed. The workers also decide when it is time to swarm (we will cover swarming in a future post) and will change her diet to slim her down so that she is capable of flying. But even more interesting, is that the worker bees have the power to dispatch the queen and raise a replacement if they so choose.

Who is the Queen?

Although we discussed the diet involved in raising a queen, one point we did not discuss was the cell orientation. Because the queen is substantially bigger than a worker bee, the cell she is raised in must be bigger as well. The bigger cells resemble a peanut and are oriented vertically. Why vertically? I don't think there is a definitive answer, but I speculated it is easier to build a queen cell vertically and take advantage of the spaces between combs. It has been proven that a queen can develop just fine in a horizontal cell (same orientation as workers/drones) as can a worker or drone in a vertical orientation.

^{image credit: HoneyBeeSuite}

There are 3 types of queen cells.

Emergency cell

This is where the queen suddenly dies or is un-expectantly killed. Emergency queens are the worst case for the bees. They have no laying queen and the colony will perish if the situation is not rectified. There is no current queen so one is raised from eggs laid in worker cells. What differentiates a queen from a worker is the food that is fed to the larvae on or around day 3. This happens to coincide with the bees needing to get the larvae from the horizontal cell to the new vertical cell they build on the face of the comb.

^{image credit: Cornwall Honey}

To get the larvae to the correct position, they float it out on thinned out royal jelly. Does this thinned out royal jelly have the same nutritional value? Right at the critical time of a larvae being either a worker or a queen. There may not be an abundance of resources for the bees to produce quality royal jelly and they just do the best they can. Out of necessity, they will attempt to raise multiple emergency queen in hope that one is successful. Any larvae that may be a little older (more than 3 days and didn’t continue to get feed straight royal jelly) will also be the first to hatch and kill all the younger, perhaps better quality, unhatched queens. I also often hear that bees will know and always select the right aged larvae. Out of desperation, bees will try and rear a queen from a non-fertile laying worker larvae (drone), so wouldn’t it be plausible they would attempt to rear from a slightly older than prime larvae? I personally do not keep queens that have been raised under the emergency method.

Supersedure cell

This is where the colony is not happy with the performance of the current queen and decides to replace her. Supersedure does not consider availability of resource or drone population for proper mating. Supersedure queens are reared from eggs of an unacceptable and/or failing queen, therefore results are marginal at best. You will find some folks that say supersedure queen are perfectly fine. Just keep in mind, that although young supersedure queen may seem just fine, come fall, when the weather starts getting tougher is when the poor quality is most likely to show up. This also, coincidentally, is the worst time to have to try and requeen. I have also seen, and heard from many beekeepers, of hives that will perpetually supersede the queen. This leads me to believe that whatever quality of the queen the bees do not like is being passed through genetics. I have had too many supersedure queen fail in the fall, so I will replace them as well

Swarm cell

The swarm cell is the cream of the crop when it comes to raising new queens. I would even argue better than queens produced by professional queen breeders other than the fact that queen breeders usually have exceptional stock to rear from. Swarms cells are produced when a colony is at it's prime, resources are abundant, and conditions are ideal. The workers create vertical queen cups that the queen will lay directly into. The larvae will be feed in abundance and cared for by a large population of nurse bees. Although swarm cells produce the best queens, they also lead to a colony swarming. Which is not desired by the beekeeper. Well will discuss swarm prevention in the future

Sixteen days after the egg was laid the virgin queen emerges from her cell. Most times the colony will raise multiple cells at a time, so the queens first action is to hunt down other cells and kill the unhatched queens. A queen hatched by chewing through the tip of the cell to create an opening. When she goes and kills unhatched queens she chews through the side of the cells and stings the helpless unhatched queen.

Normal hatched queen cell

^{image credit: thebuzzshelter}

Destroyed queen cell

^{image credit: thehivelife}

A newly hatched virgin queen, although fully developed, will not reach her full size until she is mated and ready to start laying eggs. As seen the picture below, She does have a larger, distinctive thorax (middle section) than worker bees, but her abdomen is not much bigger than a workers at this point.

I think that is enough information to try and digest for now. In the next post we will continue on with her preparing for flight, mating, egg laying and swarming. Stay tuned!

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Interested in Beekeeping?

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Check out the previous posts in the Beekeeping for Everyone! series
#1 - Introduction
#2 - The Importance of Pollinators
#3 - Honeybee Castes

Also check out these favorites:
Why You Should NEVER EVER Kill Honeybees Living in Your House
The Mysteries of a Bee Beard Revealed!!

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@bushkill