'Emergency' queens vs breeding in another hive

[Norvic_chris]

Hello wise beeks. Here's something that is confusing me about getting a new queen in a Q- hive (almost certainly laying workers):

I have inserted a frame of eggs/brood from my other hive (which is only small at this stage, on 7 frames) and sure enough there are now a couple of emergency Q cells (Finman posted a few days ago that the brood frame should also stop the workers laying but that's not the point of my question). Accepted wisdom (here and in books, including Ted Hooper), says that Q cells indicate that there (most probably) is not a queen in there, and that I should destroy the emergency cells and introduce a new Q or ripe Q cell from another hive.

OK, so perhaps I need to breed a new Queen in my healthy hive: But then when Hooper describes how to breed your new queen, the main method seems to be by separating a brood frame from the Queen's pheromone by distance (either above a couple of supers or separated by a board at the far end of the hive). So, in effect, surely the Q cells produced on this brood frame are also emergency cells because the Queen is excluded from laying there and they must therefore have been produced from an existing egg. So is the only difference the fact this Queen is raised in a strong colony and so fed better and becomes big and beefy? Or have I completely mis-understood?

The reason for asking is that I'm very tempted to leave one of the emergency Q cells to develop in my otherwise fairly healthy Q- hive and see what happens but I don't want to waste my (or the bees') time if that's really, really not a good idea! I also have no intention of buying in a new Q (yet!).

Thank you in anticipation of your advice.

 

[Finman]

.
Proplem is in these cells that the larva food is usuall too few.
When you open the cell, here is no extra food in the cell like in normal queen cells.
So, when the food finished and how much larva wanted to eate more.

You have 2 hives. I would say that there is no good reason to rear own queen. It is nice but very stupid.

.The queen starts to lay at the beginning of August and new workers emerge just before September.


Get a laying queen and you get new workers at beginning of August.
Wisest thing is to join those two hives taht workers do some honey in this summer.

 

[Poly Hive]

A weak hive does a poor job of queen rearing so apart from the time line involved in using your strong one to produce a queen its far better to introduce a mated queen.

Say you began today and the bees used a larvae of 12 hours old (best choice)

Three and a half days old on the 7th July. Emerge on the 20th. Four days or so to harden off and be ready to mate, and finding a weather window you are looking at *ish* 13th of August.

Buy a queen or your weak colony is going to be very weak indeed.

PH

 

[beeno]

Hi Norvic_chris,
Thank you for asking that question saved me the bother and you put it so much better. I read somewhere 'in a paper' that emergency cells although they look inferior as they are built out from a normal working cell are indeed superior for making new queens. Perhaps based on the notion that bees know what they are doing and if they do not pay attention they would be queenless. I think I know the answer from the pros, but I would still like to hear it! How about a one week old swarm raising an emergency queen from donated eggs?
On another note - interesting that your first test frame worked with laying workers? At least you have a couple of options which is nice. Keep us posted.

 

[Norvic_chris]

Thank you Finman and Poly Hive (and Hi Beeno! Great minds etc.) -- I clearly have only 2 options:
1. Buy a new queen;
2. Unite with my other hive.

I inspected them last night and the colony is depleting in numbers and has a fairly high varroa count (24 dropped over 4 days, so 6 average per day). I've 'treated' with icing sugar (let's not discuss that here!!! Although if you have better ideas, please tell me!!) and on the basis that there are fewer bees than just a few days ago, I think I will go for option 2 as I don't think they will have the strength to support a new queen.

So that's great for me but -- and following up on Beeno's point about my first test frame working -- by coincidence, a local friend has also had the same problem with a drone-laying queen or laying workers and, inspired by my small success, she put in a test frame. But -- just to prove that the bees are in charge -- they have not made any queen cells. Her question to me was whether she should go ahead and combine her hives anyway, in the same way I'm about to. But I was worried that her drone-laying queen or laying workers (I haven't seen her hive so don't know which one it is) might kill her good queen in the new colony she got this year. Am I right or should she just go ahead and chance it?

Thanks, Chris

(Beeno -- interesting question about the swarm but I'm not sure I know the correct answer!)

 

[meidel]

USually if there are no emergency queen cells on a test frame it means that the bees are not ready to accept a new queen and would most likely kill her. You need to look for the queen or if you're sure they're laying workers keep introducing the test frames another couple of times more and you should have some success eventually - ie they'll start to raise QCs in the end.

 

[Finman]

.
Better idea for varroa than icing sugar? I know, it is full moon.

I sprayed my big hive with 1% oxalic acid. It had 5 boxes and no brood.
It is impossible to dribble.

I thinked ha hah. The amount which I sprayed onto combs was amazing, but bees are still alive.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

Chris,
By separating the queen from the area where you are to raise queens you are using the supercedure impulse where the queen pheromone is reduced rather than the emergency impulse where there is no queen pheromone.
Colonies with laying workers don't accept queens very well which by all accounts are liable to be killed, so uniting with a strong colony is probably the best idea.

 

[Finman]

USually if there are no emergency queen cells on a test frame it means that the bees are not ready to accept a new queen and would most likely kill her. You need to look for the queen or if you're sure they're laying workers keep introducing the test frames another couple of times more and you should have some success eventually - ie they'll start to raise QCs in the end.

No. Now you give totally wrong advices.

When bees have reared an emergency cells, it takes 5 days when they cap the queen cells. Then bees accept what ever queen. There are any more laying workers because the hive is not any more queenless.

USually if there are no emergency queen cells on a test frame it means that the bees are not ready to accept a new queen

If so, the bees are so old that they do not know how to rear queens.

If you give a frame of emerging bees, they start queen cells. That is good because the hive feels normal. I have just offered to nucs just emerged virgins and bees have killed most of them. They have their queen cells and they do not need a new queen.

It is better to wait couple of days that bees cap the queen cells than sacrifice the virgins.

.

 

[Finman]

Chris,
Colonies with laying workers don't accept queens very well which by all accounts are liable to be killed, so uniting with a strong colony is probably the best idea.

Queen set up is allways a risk.
The best is uniting like Hebee says. Old bees, and put them to work!!!
They are not larva nursers.

 

[meidel]

I meant to say if there are no emergency queen cells from the test frame, it usually means the bees consider they have a queen - it may be there's a drone laying queen or virgin queen or even a mated queen not yet laying or it could mean there are laying workers. In such a state, if you were to introduce a new queen to them they would most likely kill her.

I have not been looking after bees long enough to know of bees too old to know how to raise queen cells when they know themselves to be queenless - perhaps that's similar to the state when the workers start to lay and then test frames are introduced - but even so, I've been told that they would eventually raise queen cells from these, but perhaps with the aid of the young bees emerging from the earlier test frames rather than the old laying workers.

I have been fortunate enough with my laying worker and DLQ colonies that they accepted the virgins run into their hives this season.

 

[Poly Hive]

The main issue with "emergency queens" is length of feeding time.

A normal sup or swarm cells is fed copiously from day one. An emergency grub may only be fed heavily from day 2 or two and a half.

Big difference.

So what says you well is has a big effect on the development of the queen.

PH

 

[Finman]

I meant to say if there are no emergency queen cells from the test frame, it usually means the bees consider they have a queen - it may be there's a drone laying queen or virgin queen or even a mated queen not yet laying or it could mean there are laying workers. In such a state, if you were to introduce a new queen to them they would most likely kill her.

I have not been looking after bees long enough to know of bees too old to know how to raise queen cells when they know themselves to be queenless - perhaps that's similar to the state when the workers start to lay and then test frames are introduced - but even so, I've been told that they would eventually raise queen cells from these, but perhaps with the aid of the young bees emerging from the earlier test frames rather than the old laying workers.

I have been fortunate enough with my laying worker and DLQ colonies that they accepted the virgins run into their hives this season.

I have done this 50 years. I know what they do. I know for example how to save 100% out of queens what I introduce. It has bee mere peril last 50 years if I did not know normally enough about bees.

Queenless hives or laying workers are not problems. They just activities in beekeeping.

If you need problems, do againts their will.

.

 

[meidel]

I have done this 50 years. I know what they do. It has bee a peril last 50 years if I did not know normally enough about bees.

Not doubting your word at all

 

[Norvic_chris]

.
Better idea for varroa than icing sugar? I know, it is full moon.

Oh I do like your sense of humour, Finman, it made me chuckle!! And I fully understand what you mean -- I just thought it might be worth a go as some people locally think it works really well.

.I sprayed my big hive with 1% oxalic acid. It had 5 boxes and no brood.

And this is a really good idea I hadn't even thought of -- I had presumed oxalic acid should only be used in Winter but OF COURSE that's because it's when the hive is usually broodless, like this hive now (apart from drone brood). Thank you for such common sense!

And thank you everyone for such great advice (and the discussion around the advice really helped to make it clearer for me). I think I understand now -- and another 20 years of beekeeping should just about consolidate that understanding...

Now, whether the bees will take the advice and combine like I'm going to ask them, time will tell! Chris

 

[Norvic_chris]

Quick update on progress with these hives. In the end, I took a mixture of the advice given here: I 'chucked' all the bees in the laying worker hive out of their hive about 20m away and put the frames back in the hive on the original spot (to try and remove any laying workers left). The next day I combined the whole lot with my Q+ hive (newspaper method) and went on holiday for the week! Just checked and they have combined very well (Q still happily laying in bottom brood box and frames from laying worker hive now cleaned out nicely and being used as a super), which is a relief.

So now I'm back to just one hive for winter, which is a shame, but at least there are plenty of bees to get ready -- and it's better than no hives at all! No honey crop this year I suppose, unless there's a late flow (I'm surrounded by fields of wheat and barley -- no major forage since the oil-seed rape in spring, which yielded well).

Final question if anyone sees this: I now have a brood box (with Queen), super and brood box arrangement, with the top brood box now being used as a super. What's the best way of combining the 22 brood frames into one box -- how do I choose which ones to keep (from the ones without brood) and what do I do with the ones that have some stores but I will have to take out as I only need 11? Dilemma?

Thanks, Chris

 

[oliver90owner]

Dilemma?

Remove and extract (or store) capped frames. Dummy the boxes to encourage them to fill/cap more frames and repeat as necessary.

Decide later on how you intend to over-winter them.

You might even decide to buy in a queen and split the frames between them.

This could end in two strong colonies into winter or one and a nuc sized or only one. Can't tell as the crystal ball is cloudy!

 

[Norvic_chris]

Thanks for this O90O, what a good idea to get in a queen and split the frames -- I've had a couple of people contacting me and offering to sell me queens, so I will give it some thought. I'll try 'dummying' too -- none of the frames have been capped (bar about 20% on two or three), so the more they do of this, the better. Sorry to hear about the crystal ball -- but with the weather we've been having, it would be a miracle if it wasn't cloudy!!

 

[mbc]

[/B]


They are not larva nursers.

This is the most important point IMO, the physiological age of the bees isnt right for optimum production of royal jelly so any emergency queen they raise is likely to be inferior.
Also,I cant find it at the mo, but there is some research indicating queens raised by the emergency impulse tend to have smaller ovaries anyway, and so are less able to lead a productive life.
Once some of the brood from the test frame hatches then you have a better chance of a bought in queen being accepted as there will be young bees of the right age to fuss her and start feeding any brood from the first eggs she lays.