What stimulates the queen to begin laying

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Frenchie

House Bee
Joined
May 23, 2010
Messages
195
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Location
Normandie
Hive Type
Langstroth
Number of Hives
4
Is it the increase in hive temperature,after the winter recess, that stimulates the queen to begin laying eggs or the amount of food coming into the hive. I always thought that the hive temperature was maintained at a constant level,but read somewhere that the increase in hive temperature stimulates the queen to lay.
 
The workers stimulate the queen into laying. They feed her more. The brood nest will also be increased in temperature, but that may be an effect, but not a cause.

Don’t be confused about who runs the show - it is the workers who are in charge of the queen’s laying activities, as they are for most hive activities.
 
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The queen may lay all, but if bees think, they do not feed larvae. There are eggs in combs, but not larvae.
 
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In my nature start of spring is sharp. About first of May willows start to bloom.
Then hives get protein etc food to feed brood, and brooding starts. The queen has layed several weeks some, but workers did not have protein to feed larvae.

I start protein patty feeding on second week of March, when snow melts from ground. Bees need lots of water, otherwise larvae become sick and die. There are no condensation water in the hive what guys write. When first bees emerge, they get fresh pollen from nature.

Pollen foraging depends on weather, how often bees fly in bad weathers. Bees eate part of larvae to get protein. And in autumn they eate all larvae when they decide it.

Bees rear some brood in February, even if out temp is -20C. Tht is universal phenomenom and depends on lengtening day. Here they do not get drinking water from snow and they can rear only some ten workers.
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If I have read the question correctly, what you want to know is what is the trigger for increased brood production in Spring, if so the answer is simple, as with other animals Spring preparations... day length.
 
I think its pollen. When it comes so does feeding queen and egg production. I say this because if you feed pollen queen starts laying
 
I say this because if you feed pollen queen starts laying

IT is not so...
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How many of you know, when the hive has eggs, even if the hive has no larvae?

And why some colonies have brood the whole year and why some do not have?

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An old friend, who was the bee inspector in Maine for more than 30 years, was in charge of setting up the observation hives for the State Farm Show in January. January in the state of Maine is cold. Very cold. He told me that he always found a palm sized patch of brood in the hives.

I was always led to believe from what I've read over the years, that as the temperatures drop, the cluster tightens. As the cluster tightens, the temperature in the cluster rises. When the temperature reaches brood rearing temperature, the queen begins to lay. Just that palm sized bit of brood.
 
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On my area egg laying means nothing. IT is larva feeding, what has meaning.
And larva feeding means presence of pollen. Italian bee eates pollen stores off in autumn and start brooding when it gets pollen from willows.

Surely workers do all this job. But workers get genes from Queen and from drones.

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If the colony continues brood rearing too long in autumn, it will die off.
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Me and my friend bought American VSH genes 2 summers ago, but all those hives continued brood rearing in autumn, and every hive died.

In my climate it is very essential, when the Queen stops laying. If its calendar in genes is not proper, the hive will die.
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Mr Palmer? Your inspector might like to read Mobus on Wintering.

Oh well seems I cannot post the link courtesy of Admin. Come on Admin please.

PH
 
Moisture control.

Article printed in the ABJ in 1988 I believe.

PH
 
Moisture control.

Article printed in the ABJ in 1988 I believe.

PH

Mobus 1998 ABJ 138 No 7 & No 8
I found this synopsis by Fusionpower in an earlier post
Here is a synopsis of the Mobus article from issue 138 no. 7

He read the work of Jeffree from the 1950's about wintering bees. He evaluated brood in colonies over the winter of 1974/1975 and counted cells with eggs, larvae, and sealed pupa. There is a chart showing individual colony results in detail by inspection date. There was a positive correlation between brood rearing and food consumption. Colonies that started brood rearing in January used half as much stores as colonies that produced brood off and on in December. Egg laying was sporadic with some eggs produced followed by a break for up to 3 weeks. By the look of the charts, it looks like egg laying was roughly on a 3 week basis with brood counts ranging from 300 and most of the colonies about 1000, then a few up to 1700. Key takeaway is that brood laying is not continuous but stops and starts over the winter.

He then performs a statistical analysis of food consumption and brood produced showing r=0.92 which is a very high correlation. My interpretation of this is that bees that are quiet most of December and then begin brood rearing in January consume less stores and have higher probability of successful overwintering. He relates this to cluster specific effects such as accumulation of waste when cleansing flights are not possible and to premature aging of winter bees that produce food for the brood.

He then does an evaluation of colonies with queens caged in the middle of the cluster over winter and shows that not rearing brood induces additional stress that causes colonies to fail. Then he discusses creating some super colonies by uniting 2 strong colonies late in the fall. These oversize colonies went through disastrous bee losses as a result of lack of water in the winter cluster. He provides a chart showing bee weights from normal colonies and from the super colonies to show that the bees from the super colonies were severely desiccated.

Here is issue 138 no. 8

He built a styrofoam box using 30 mm stock and used it to enclose a colony so that there was an entrance corresponding to the Langstroth hive entrance and placed the colony on a scale. There were heavy losses of bees from this insulated hive any time a cleansing flight occurred. Relatively minor losses were recorded from other colonies sans insulation. Food consumption in the hive was 4.17 kg which corresponds with a colony that produced little or no brood over the winter. This is about half the food consumption of normal colonies over the 126 day measuring period. He spends quite a few sentences discussing the extremely low food consumption of the insulated hive. He relates the insulated hive in 1976/1977 to the carefully measured and weighed bees in the previous issue. One conclusion he makes and produces very good support for is that there is an optimum size colony for overwintering and colonies larger than or smaller than optimum are at a disadvantage. This optimum colony has between 10,000 and 15,000 bees.

He then reviews The Hive and The Honeybee article 1975 edition by Furgala where he describes winter cluster dynamics. This part would be particularly interesting as it discusses heat conductance as temperature goes up and down and the cluster expands or contracts as needed to adapt to the temperature. Then he discusses work by Gontarski and Altmann who measured CO2 produced by bees under highly controlled conditions. They proved that bees in the center of the cluster are very low metabolizers with little CO2 produced but relatively high evaporation of H2O. Bees on the outside of the cluster in the "shell" are high metabolizers consuming honey and producing most of the CO2." One conclusion is worth repeating. "When clustering is brought about by onset of colder weather, each bee in the cluster will generate heat in direct proportion to its heat loss - which is in inverse proportion to its own temperature experience." In other words, the colder the bee gets, the more heat it produces to keep warm. A warm bee in the center of the cluster has to do very little work while the bees on the outside of the cluster have to work extra hard to stay warm.

At this point he discusses a relationship between water produced by the high metabolizing outer shell bees vs the low metabolizing inner cluster bees. There is a cline such that inner cluster bees do not have enough water. He then mentions the well documented behavior of bees moving from the inner cluster to the shell and shows that they do so to increase their metabolism thus producing much needed water while bees from the shell move to the cluster interior to dry out after accumulating too much water. He relates this dynamic to the failure of super colonies which have too many bees in the interior cluster and therefore are chronically short of water. Then he correlates with the highly insulated hive by showing that it keeps the bees from having to metabolize honey which produces an artificial shortage of water in the cluster. He wraps up the section discussing small colonies that have to expend too much effort staying warm and accumulate too much water plus waste in the bowel eventually leading to severe dysentery.

The conclusion is a discussion of thirst and availability of water as a primary consideration in good wintering.
 
Moisture control.

Article printed in the ABJ in 1988 I believe.

PH

Hi Poly hive
I've a PDF copy of the article from your web site:
Brood Rearing in the Winter Cluster
By Bernard Mobus, N.D.B.
By kind permission of the ABJ, first published July 1988.

More than happy to up load it if I'm not breaking any rules?
 
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"Availybility of water is essential in good wintering"

Yes but my bees are inside hives from November to March , 5 months, and they do not get any water not from outside and not from hive. There is no condensation water on walls what they can pick. Hive is so cold that bees cannot walk outside the cluster.

The researches lives in some tropic because their hives start brooding in January.

Just now an Australian beekeeper explains in one forum, how bees overwinter in cold climates. Not much sense in that writing.

General belief is that bees drink in winter in cold climate, but that is not possible inside hive, and not on snow.
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