New queen's wings nibbled!?

[user 382]

So I thought I'd try a couple of mini mating nucs this year - I normally just use normal national size nuc boxes. However, I was suprised to see a small cluster of bees on the ground in front of one mini nuc this afternoon with the queen amongst them, but her wings appeared to have been nibbled.

Anyone else experienced this sort of thing before? It's a new one to me.

 

[B+.]

Anyone else experienced this sort of thing before? It's a new one to me.

Could they have been exposed to cold?

 

[user 382]

It's possible, although the lowest temp over the last week or so has still been in double digits (degrees C).

 

[B+.]

It's possible, although the lowest temp over the last week or so has still been in double digits (degrees C).

The thoughts that occur to me are:
cold - not just ambient temperature but insufficient workers in the nuc to keep the cell warm (even temporarily)
vibration - movement when the wing buds are developing.
varroa - I've never seen this happen because the queen has the shortest development cycle so is least attractive to varroa mites. Also her cell is packed full of food and the mite would be at the bottom. If the queen was short of food, a mite could be released when the developing larva ate it all. Unlikely IMO.

 

[user 382]

This queen hatched from a ripe queen cell, I'd guess at no more than 12 hours after adding to the mini nuc. I'll have to check on the other mini nuc to see how that queen is doing.

Oh well. C'est la vie