Another puzzle

[Jon]

Doris is not the only only poster with a puzzle to post.

I have been away for 18 days and I left behind a motley collection of colonies, nucs, and apideas - 34 in all.

I checked them all yesterday and today and saw a total of 35 queens!

The extra queen was in a colony to which I had introduced a queen cell on 18th July. The queen was starting to emerge when I put the cell in and I removed the cup with the hatched cell the next day.

This colony had made queen cells and I had removed the queen on 7th July after removing all the queen cells. I then put in a frame of grafts which hatched in the 18th, one of which I left in the colony. The rest went to apideas and a couple of nucs.

I had been using this colony as a queenright cell raiser but stopped when I found cells in the lower box.
I got an idea that the colony was queenless around the end of July and put in a test frame which produced no cells - suggesting that a virgin was present.

I have a couple of theories but someone may have a better explanation.

1. I used this colony as a cell raiser and I remember finding one cell which looked like it had hatched a day early some time in late June/early July. I was worried that a virgin may be loose in the upper box but no cells were pulled down in the next batch of cells raised so I discounted this.

2. A virgin may have left an Apidea and entered the colony as I had apideas in the apiary all summer and virgins went missing on a regular basis.

Either way, I don't know why one queen did not kill the other and how come both are laying and tolerating each other?
Neither was marked until today and one is black and the other is banded. The black one is almost certainly the one I introduced in a hatching queen cell as this was grafted from my colony 33 and all her daughters are black.

I still have the marked queen which I removed on 7th July in another colony.

[Adam]

Buy one colony, get a queen free! it doesn't usually work like that.

I have posted - elsewhere I think - that I had a clipped queen that swarmed and walked into a nuc with a virgin queen in and the clipped queen was cowering on the outermost frame looking decidedly unhappy unlike your two queens.
I guess that your colony thinks that they are in a supercedure situation, as I understand can happen and at some time one queen will get ejected although I did read that one pair of queens lasted through the winter to Spring.

I wonder as Autumn is approaching, the swarm urge changes to a "preserve bee numbers" and a supercedure urge as there would be no benefit to the colony in swarming at this time of year.

I too have had a few queens leaving apideas and finding themselves where they shouldn't. I blame one at least on a swarm from a large hive. I am absolutely convinced they shouldn't have swarmed otherwise.


I have returned from 2 weeks away and one nuc looks queenless and another also appears queenless with a sealed queencell. (I could not find the clipped and marked queens in either). My other colonies are all OK.
Oddly, both queenless colonies had lying down eggs so the queen had been laying just a few days previously and the weather had been poor in the few days before inspection - so an odd time to leave the hive if that's what they chose to do. I'll inspect again further - maybe this evening.

How long did it take you to inspect all hives?

[Jon]

at some time one queen will get ejected although I did read that one pair of queens lasted through the winter to Spring.


I decided to remove one to an Apidea today but they beat me to it and I found the banded one dead outside the hive!
The other one was the one I introduced so at least the right queen won the fight.
If that had happened earlier in the year I would have been annoyed with myself but I still have 3 spare in Apideas.



How long did it take you to inspect all hives?

I reckon about 6 hours but I wasn't racing. we have beautiful weather at the moment and I was enjoying it after 3 weeks away from the bees.
The bees were so calm I didn't have to use smoke or water spray and no stings either.

The big surprise was the lack of supersedure - just cells in a couple of nucs which I removed as the queens were still there and laying.

[Adam]

Jon, what are you going to do with the small colonies in the Apideas? The year is ticking on...

[Jon]

I am going to try and overwinter two or 3 queens by removing floors and stacking 3 apideas on top of each other to make more space.
Andrew Abrahams on Colonsay has overwintered queens in this way and he's a lot further north than me.
He did a talk titled 'overwintering mini-nucs' at the Bibba conference last weekend.
I will use queens which I intend to replace as it is just an experiment.
Apparently the key factor is regular feeding plus a source of early pollen in February and March as opposed to keeping them warm.

[Jon]

I decided to remove one to an Apidea today but they beat me to it and I found the banded one dead outside the hive!

I was putting on apiguard today and had a quick check in this colony and found the remaining marked queen plus...... a sealed supersedure cell on a pollen frame where I had last seen the banded queen which was dead outside the colony.
There was no other brood on the frame and there was a larva in the supersedure cell.
I removed the cell.
What on earth is the colony playing at - more to the point, what might be the underlying cause of this behaviour?

[Adam]

I guess that sometimes the pheromones go a bit wrong. Will be interesting to see wht happens to this colony with this queen over the next weeks and months.
With regard to Apideas, I have heard of two being used together to get a colony through the winter but this, I think, was Southern England. I've got some small colonies in my plywood small frame nucs - one of which is a very small box; I will try to get them through the winter. So far I tried one 2 years ago and it worked - they JUST had some stores when I popped in some candy and pollen substitute in March. My hope is that they survive so I have some ready-populated mini-nucs for splitting and queen rearing next year.