Day 36: Reading up on what has happened...

Beekeeping class textbook--with wonderful drawings

Having not heard back from my bee guru Rick, on how to proceed with my queen-wrong hive, I revisited my beekeeping class textbook and read Chapter 11, entitled “Special Management Problems.” I fully admit to having not read this chapter during my class, as I was much more interested in Chapter 4, entitled “Obtaining and Preparing for Bees.” Better late than never!! 

There are three main scenarios that result in the appearance of queen cells: swarming, supersedure, and emergency replacement. Each case can occur for several reasons, and have different features that a seasoned beekeeper could easily recognize--as for me, I am trying to do my best to play detective with limited information, and even less experience :)

Example swarm cells

Swarms can happen from hive congestion, overheating, inclement weather, loss of queen pheromones, poor egg laying due to too much honey in the combs, etc. It is characterized by 10-40 queen cells on the bottom of frames, a populous colony, and bees hovering near the hive entrance.

Supersedure happens when a colony decides to replace an old or inferior queen with a young queen. Workers build a few queen cells (between 1 and 5) and when the new queen emerges, she destroys the other queen cells, and generally her mother queen. This happens when the original queen is deficient in egg laying (due to injury, poor rearing, disease, or a hundred other reasons). 

Example emergency cells

Emergency queens develop when there is a sudden loss of the queen. Under these circumstances, the workers are forced to turn a couple of ordinary worker cells into a queen cells by adding wax as the larval queens develop. These cells are different than large queen cups that would be used for planned swarming or supersedure events. Emergency queen cells are usually found within the regular comb adjacent to capped brood and not at the bottom of the frames. Since emergency queens are unplanned, and start their development as worker larvae, they do not look as robust as swarm queens once they emerge.

Suspicious loitering by hive entrance

At this point I am pretty confident that my hive has undergone an emergency queen situation, even with some of the queen cells a bit close to the bottom edge of the frame, and despite some bees hanging out near the hive entrance later into the evening than previously (perhaps they are enjoying the warm weather!). I added the second brood box to the colony today, just in case congestion is an issue, though I have no evidence of this. I have decided to let all of the queen cells hatch on their own, and wait to see what happens next.