Test Frame Failure

[Ruary]

This tale is from a very experienced beekeeper and queen breeder.

He is having problems this autumn with queenless colonies and re-queening them. In one case he found that the colony did not seem to have a queen, so he inserted a test frame. On checking this he found two queen cells being raised: so the colony was queenless.
He inserted on his pedigree queens (marked), checking some time later he foumd that the queen had been killed and going though the hive he found a virgin queen.
So the question is why did they raise two queen cells on the test frame.

Ruary

[Adam]

Driver error...... He could have missed a queencell - buried in the corner of a frame - just before he put the test-frame in? Or got confused and put the test-frame or queen in the wrong hive?

[Jon]

The virgin could have flown in from elsewhere after the test frame was put in. Happens all the time with a queenless colony especially if there are loads of apideas about.

[gavin]

How well did you do at school, guys? Answer the question!



So the question is why did they raise two queen cells on the test frame.
Ruary

Might they have tried supersedure on the test frame?

G.

[Jon]

How well did you do at school, guys? Answer the question!

I did my best!
Presumably there was a gap between test frame and queen introduction. That was when I imagined the virgin flew in.
A couple of years ago I had a queenless colony with a single queen cell in it.
A virgin flew out from a 2 frame nuc beside it and took over the colony after tearing down the queen cell.

[gavin]

Here's my interpretation:

- colony has non-laying small queen in residence
- beekeeper introduces frame with eggs
- workers take the opportunity to raise a couple of supersedure cells
- don't know if the cells were left, doesn't matter
- beekeeper introduces queen
- existing small queen (looks like a virgin) kills introduced queen

[Jon]

Queens change places more often than people realise.
last year a marked and clipped queen from a colony which swarmed ended up in a nuc of mine which had a queen cell and was about 10-12 feet away.

[Adam]

We don't know if the virgin queen is a small one. Nor do we know how good the test frame was (i.e. were there many good eggs/larvae or just a few) - you are assuming that the bees would have produced more than 2 queencells if hopelessly queenless. Were the queencells emergency ones or supercedure ones?
I too had wondered about a virgin flying in - I've seen queen bed-swapping myself and seen two in a hive.
I've had the odd small virgin - they tend to start to lay (often surprisingly well), before any signs of supercedure, so would supercedure be started before the virgin started to lay? Dunno on that one. Anything is possible.

Being picky after the event and acting as an arm-chair beekeeper-critic, you could argue that if only two queencells were drawn, why did a pedigree queen get put in the hive if they were supercedure queencells?

[Jon]

I had one I was pretty sure was queenless at the end of July as the marked and clipped queen was not present and there was a single supersedure cell with a queen which had failed to fully develop.
I grafted 20 larvae into a grafting frame and they started about 12 or 13 queen cells on it.
If the bees were very old or few in number it is possible they would start fewer queen cells but I have had queenless colonies start about 30 on a test frame. When you remove a queen from an apidea they rarely start more than a single queen cell.


so would supercedure be started before the virgin started to lay? Dunno on that one. Anything is possible.
Dunno either but hard to imagine how that could happen as in nature without a beekeeper there would never be eggs present to start supersedure.

If you go back to Ruary's comment about experienced beekeeper and queen breeder that suggests that he likely has mini-nucs or nucs with virgin queens in abundance so a stray virgin would still get my vote.

Or hey, no-one has blamed it on Imidacloprid yet. Are you all asleep at the wheel?

[Calum]

queen was at Barmoral flyfishing

[Adam]

- existing small queen (looks like a virgin) kills introduced queen
We can assume that an experienced 'keeper would be able to tell the difference (although they can take a while to fully grow when in a mini-nuc even when laying).

(although they can take a while to fully grow when in a mini-nuc even when laying). Jon, here's a thought, queens tend to start laying earlier in a mini-nuc than in a full-sized hive. So if my comment in bold is generally true and newly laying queen can look a little immature, could we conclude that a young mated queen needs to 'grow' more in a bigger hive before she starts to lay (is allowed to lay) rather than in an artificially small hive?

[Adam]

"How well did you do at school, guys? Answer the question!

Quote Originally Posted by Ruary
"So the question is why did they raise two queen cells on the test frame".
Ruary"

Because they can. They're bees. They will do what they damn well want to and they don't read.

[gavin]

Maybe Ruary knows more details of the story and can judge. Anyway, straying virgins (or recently mated queens) and a small, hard-to-spot prior resident not laying at the time for some reason but firing off a few to generate queen cells seem like two possibilities and, of course, the bees would be either making emergency cells or supersedure cells.

[Jon]

could we conclude that a young mated queen needs to 'grow' more in a bigger hive before she starts to lay (is allowed to lay) rather than in an artificially small hive?

A virgin which flies and mates will not start laying for 2 or 3 days in an apidea or a full colony.

A queen laying in an apidea always seems to get a bit bigger when introduced successfully to a full colony.

We need Ruary back with chapter and verse.