Advice on a single sealed QC discovery

[Erichalfbee]

They must know something we don't know that the bees know ?

Of course they do. They are bees.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

So ... according to the studies and if they are valid ... the bees prefer their queens to be raised from eggs that are three days old

Have you actually sat back and studied that statement? that three day old egg is exactly the same as a one day old egg, or a two day old egg, it only changes after the third day - when it hatches.
Or are you actually saying that queens sometimes lay three day old eggs, and that bees will ignore a three day old egg if it was once two days old?

 

[JamezF]

Have you actually sat back and studied that statement? that three day old egg is exactly the same as a one day old egg, or a two day old egg, it only changes after the third day - when it hatches.
Or are you actually saying that queens sometimes lay three day old eggs, and that bees will ignore a three day old egg if it was once two days old?

Might be possible that they want the process to be as short as possible and therefore desire an egg that is about to hatch, rather than one that they have to hang around a couple of days waiting for? (I'm guessing here.)

If you like, a three day old egg is not the same as a two day old egg, because tomorrow the three day old egg will be a larva and the two day old egg will still be an egg.

James

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

hence the reason they 'prefer' the three day old egg is because it's about to hatch. They don't 'prefer' it, they are just targetting one about to hatch rather than hanging around.
It's like when I have to go to a meeting in Westminster on a Tuesday, I always 'prefer' to travel to Neath to catch a train about to leave on Tuesday morning rather than one scheduled to leave on Monday.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

what the bees actually 'prefer' is a newly hatched larva

 

[pargyle]

Have you actually sat back and studied that statement? that three day old egg is exactly the same as a one day old egg, or a two day old egg, it only changes after the third day - when it hatches.
Or are you actually saying that queens sometimes lay three day old eggs, and that bees will ignore a three day old egg if it was once two days old?

It's not what I said ... the studies that are quoted found that three day old eggs had more chance of becoming bigger queens and that the percentages of queen cells that were taken down by the bees were less when they were built on three day old eggs than when they were built on younger eggs or larvae. Spend 15 minutes and read what the Apiarist has taken from the studies or go to the empiric data and make your own mind up ...

 

[pargyle]

what the bees actually 'prefer' is a newly hatched larva

Not according to the studies apparently ... but I'm sure your beekeeping knowledge trumps any academic study. I too found it surprising but ... that's what it says.

 

[Antipodes]

Not according to the studies apparently ... but I'm sure your beekeeping knowledge trumps any academic study. I too found it surprising but ... that's what it says.

These may help....

https://www.researchgate.net/public...e_Honey_Bee_Apis_mellifera_Hymenoptera_Apidae

https://www.researchgate.net/figure...as-it-appears-from-oviposition_fig1_232679366

And also this...

https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/media/en...ing/37,-April-2017,-Honey-Bee-Development.pdf

According to Jamie Ellis in the above article...
"Eggs begin to recline as they mature over the course of about three days (Tables1, 2, and Figure 1). Thus, eggs from which larvae are ready to emerge lay on their sides, or nearly so, in the back of the cell".

I wonder why they change angle over those three days? What is happening to the egg?

 

[Erichalfbee]

what the bees actually 'prefer' is a newly hatched larva

Perhaps the bees cannot tell between an egg hatched two hours ago and two minutes ago so stand and watch, loaded with full hypo pharyngeal glands, over eggs ?

 

[rolande]

It's fairly widely excepted

Yes ... so the bees are attempting to select the best candidates in selecting three day old eggs - which, as has been pointed out, within a few hours are going to be larvae and fed on Royal Jelly.

What does not make sense is why the bees prefer to select eggs for queen production if it makes no difference if they selected just any old larvae. They must know something we don't know that the bees know ?

I think that they always know something that we don't, bit like the business of workers vibrating on certain queen cells as they approach maturity, there must be a reason.

There are a couple of lectures by Keith Delaplane on YouTube (apologies for not having a link at present) where he discusses the so called royal families originally recorded by Moritz -lines of queens that have genetics massively under represented amongst the general workers, his take on the matter is that the larvae of those lines are able to use pheromone ques to encourage nurse bees to select them for queen rearing.

 

[Erichalfbee]

It's fairly widely excepted

I think that they always know something that we don't, bit like the business of workers vibrating on certain queen cells as they approach maturity, there must be a reason.

There are a couple of lectures by Keith Delaplane on YouTube (apologies for not having a link at present) where he discusses the so called royal families originally recorded by Moritz -lines of queens that have genetics massively under represented amongst the general workers, his take on the matter is that the larvae of those lines are able to use pheromone ques to encourage nurse bees to select them for queen rearing.

Lots on the internet about this. Just Google royal patrilines in bees
This is The Apiarist’s article on it
https://theapiarist.org/whos-the-daddy/

More here

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199124

 

[rolande]

Lots on the internet about this. Just Google royal patrilines in bees
This is The Apiarist’s article on it
https://theapiarist.org/whos-the-daddy/

More here

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0199124

I'll read link tonight, I mentioned Delaplane's lectures in particular as he has a very negative view of these royal families and makes the argument that beekeeper grafting drastically removes the opportunity for these, as he says, parasitic lines to perpetuate themselves.

 

[BeeKeyPlayer]

I wonder why they change angle over those three days? What is happening to the egg?

What is happening to the egg is that workers are entering the cells and head butting the eggs down to a horizontal position. There is a scientific video of this but it's a few years since I've seen it and I don't have time at the moment to dig it out. Sorry.

 

[Antipodes]

What is happening to the egg is that workers are entering the cells and head butting the eggs down to a horizontal position. There is a scientific video of this but it's a few years since I've seen it and I don't have time at the moment to dig it out. Sorry.

Fantastic Bee Key. I'll just make up a mental picture of it. "Eggs begin to be forcefully reclined". Appreciated. I can sleep better now

 

[Erichalfbee]

What is happening to the egg is that workers are entering the cells and head butting the eggs down to a horizontal position. There is a scientific video of this but it's a few years since I've seen it and I don't have time at the moment to dig it out. Sorry.

That’s very neat. I’d live to see the video if you do get to find it.
Perhaps the bees are checking out how old the eggs are?

 

[pargyle]

And also this...

https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/media/en...ing/37,-April-2017,-Honey-Bee-Development.pdf

According to Jamie Ellis in the above article...
"Eggs begin to recline as they mature over the course of about three days (Tables1, 2, and Figure 1). Thus, eggs from which larvae are ready to emerge lay on their sides, or nearly so, in the back of the cell".

I wonder why they change angle over those three days? What is happening to the egg?

There's a very interesting paragraph in the Jamie Ellis study:

"The brood food fed to developing queens
is called royal jelly. Royal jelly contains
mostly the white component (mandibular
gland secretion) the first three days of the
larva’s development and then equal parts
white and clear secretions (the latter, from
the hypopharangeal glands) throughout the
rest of the queen’s development. Royal jelly
contains more sugar than does brood food.
In fact, it is about 34% sugar or more, main-
ly in the form of glucose. Glucose is the
dominant sugar in royal jelly throughout the
developing queen’s life. Sugar is a feeding
stimulate, thus causing developing queens
to eat more food, further encouraging their
growth as queens. The female larvae remain
totipotent during the first three days of their
lives, meaning that they can become queens
or workers up to three days after hatching,
despite the differences in diet quality fed to
developing queens and workers. The caste
(queen or worker) is determined by the time
the 3rd instar is reached.
In contrast to how worker and drone
larvae are fed, queen honey bee larvae are
mass provisioned. They are fed so much, in
fact, that they are not able to eat all of the
food their sisters provide to them. There
is leftover food in the queen’s cell when
she emerges as an adult. The queen’s diet
is about 11.9% protein, 67.1% moisture
and 4.3% lipids. The diet also contains
royalactin, a protein once believed to be thel
main factor leading to the development of
queens rather than workers, though this was
shown recently not to be the case. Instead,
the high sugar content of royal jelly causes
the developing queen to eat more food.
This, in turn, triggers the larva’s produc-
tion of JH. Worker larvae also produce
JH, but in much lower quantities than that
produced by queens. In general, queen
larvae have high JH titers (levels) on day
3 of larval develop, right at the time they
become destined for royalty. In contrast,
the worker larvae have lower titers of JH
at day three. In fact, the JH levels in queen
larvae at 72 hours after emerging from their
eggs is 10× more than that in workers of
the same age. During the first three days of
development, when the larvae can be either
a queen or a worker, a wide array of genes
become active. These genes remain active
in the developing worker. However, royal
jelly down-regulates (lowers the expres-
sion of) some of these genes and a distinct
set of caste-related genes are upregulated
(increased expression)."

So, it follows that the earlier the larva is mass fed Royal Jelly the earlier it will develop queen architecture. It also follows that the consequence of bees seeking to create queens from older larvae is that the queen will be of lesser quality ?

It does tie in nicely with the studies that I mentioned insomuch as the bee's prefer three day old eggs as queen candidates as the imminently hatching larvae will be mass fed from almost the point of hatching ?

I'm no expert but I can see why the bees are, on average, selecting three day old eggs on which to build their preferred queens. The greater knock down rate of queen cells built on older larvae may be that they recognise the inferiority of these queens ? As for why there is a greater knock down rate of queen cells built on one and two day eggs - perhaps the bees recognise that some eggs are better than others for queen rearing and by the time they reach three days old the bees can be more confident of their egg candidates being the best fit for purpose ?

Who knows ? Fascinating though ...

 

[Erichalfbee]

So, it follows that the earlier the larva is mass fed Royal Jelly the earlier it will develop queen architecture. It also follows that the consequence of bees seeking to create queens from older larvae is that the queen will be of lesser quality ?

Do bees try to make queens from 4 day old larvae which have been starved of royal jelly for a day?

The female larvae remain
totipotent during the first three days of their
lives, meaning that they can become queens
or workers up to three days after hatching,

So for six days if you include 1/2/3 day old eggs

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Do bees try to make queens from 4 day old larvae

what about four day old eggs?

 

[J F]

So....

Back to the topic

I inspected today. 5 capped and 2 uncapped queen cells with no larvae or eggs but....

I found the queen. I might've mistaken her for a VQ but for a bit of red paint. She's somehow rubbed off a lot of her red paint. Maybe it's come off after slimming down? She didn't look overly small and I did see eggs and BIAS. No other VQs visible and the hive was absolutely rammed, bees packed in EVERYWHERE.

So I'm guessing she was readying for a swarm? Question is why was she still in the hive if there were so many capped cells? She is not clipped.

I've made a split with 5 frames in each. One with the queen and no QCs. One with 2 capped QCs. Supered them both as the last hive had 2 and they were all over the frames drawing comb and filling with nectar.

I'll reinspect the queened hive in a week and leave the other well alone. If there's still an issue I'll requeen.

Bees were not in their usual friendly mood at all. Even got a bit stingy which is unusual for them. They have been sounding queenless for 4/5 days.

 

[Erichalfbee]

So I'm guessing she was readying for a swarm? Question is why was she still in the hive if there were so many capped cells? She is not clipped.

It’s common. I see it quite often.