The Mother Of All Queens Is MIA

Todays activities included grafting queen cells for the first time. I had intended to use eggs form the Mother Queen of my best hive. Upon opening the hive I could not find any eggs or larva. This is the hive I tipped over on June 8th when removing the miller frame from the hive. I thought that she was ok, Perhaps she was injured and died. There were no queen cells found in the hive. Perhaps I destroyed them during an inspection, not knowing that the queen was gone. On June 21 I examined the miller frame to find one large queen cell still intact. I moved this frame along with a frame of bees and brood to a queen mating nuc. The queen should emerge from the cell in a day or two. It will then take up to two weeks for the virgin queen to mate and start laying eggs.
.
.
Grafted plastic cell cups which have been pressed into the cell bar prior to grafting. Each bar holds 15 plastic cups.
.
.
.
.
.
.


I took a frame of eggs and larva from my next best hive. The hive has proven to be strong, but the bees are average in temperament and not as gentle as the mother queen I had hoped to use.
.
Cell bars with attached grafted plastic cell cups place in the cell bar frame. The frame is upside down, and will hang opposite in the cell builder hive.
.
See the frame of larva in the background?
.
Grafting is an interesting process.

The best queens are raised from larva that is newly hatched so I wanted to graft the smallest larva on the frame. The frame I selected from had everything from capped brood to eggs. With my reading glasses on it was easy to compare the sizes of the larva to make sure the youngest larva was selected. I used warm moist towels to keep the grafts warm and to keep them from drying out prior to transferring them into the cell building hive. After about 10 failures I was able to transfer the larva into the plastic cell cups. Since I created the cell building hive on June 1st it now contains, a few emerging brood, no eggs, no larva, and of course no queen. The only larva in the hive will be the young larva I grafted. If the bees accept the grafts they will begin to build queen cells from them. In 36 hours I should be able to see the results of the grafts.
.

.
The cell bar frame inserted into the queen cell builder hive. This hive has no queen, larva, or eggs other than what has been added with the cell cups.
.
.
I am hoping I will have more control of the process with the grafted cells verses the miller frame method used in prior weeks. There will be no question about the age of the larva and the expected emergence date of the queens. With the miller frame. eggs and larva of various ages could have been used by the bees to rear queens. Since the bees select which lava to turn into queens, there is less control. With the grafting method, since I was the one to select the larva, there should only be, at the most, 24 hours difference in the age of the queen cells.
.

From left to right. 10 frame cell builder hive, 4 section mating nuc, 4 section mating nuc. You can see the sugar syrup feeders. Only one of the mating nuc sections is in use. It contains a queen cell from the miller frame use peviously
.
36 hours will tell.

Where have all the queen cells gone ?

Where have all the queen cells gone ?
Long time passing
Where have all the queen cells gone ?
Long time ago
Where have all the queen cells gone ?
Gone to graveyards,
every one.
When will I ever learn ?
When will I ever learn ?


Of course that’s not really how the song goes, but it is the song I have been singing this week.

Yes it is true. For some still unknown reason, the beautiful queen cells which the bees had been raising, have been destroyed.

I conducted a hive inspection on June 18th with the intent of starting my mating nucs and transferring the queen cells into the mating nucs. I found that all the queen cells had been either destroyed, or the larva was dead in the uncapped cells. What happened? An inspection this week should tell. I expect it could have been one of four things.
.
.
The Miller frame, full of queen cells (13) on June 16th. On June 18th the cells were dead.
.
.
.
.
.
.


First: The cold nights combined with the screened bottom board could have chilled the queen cells and caused the queen larva to die.

There were two unseasonably cold nights a week and a half ago. Temperatures dropped into the low 40’s which could have chilled the larva. Since this is a miller frame and it was not fully drawn out there were not as many bees on the frame as on the others. However, the miller frame was in the middle of a very strong hive. The bees should have been able to keep them warm.

Second: My math could have been wrong.

Perhaps one or more queens were raised from larva that was older than I thought, allowing a virgin queen to emerge and destroy the other cells before the expected emergence date. Lets see. The miller frame with eggs was taken from the mother hive and installed in the cell building hive on June 8th. If the eggs (assumed 3 days old ) were installed in the cell builder on the 8th then the queens would be emerging 13 days later (16 – 3) on June 21st. No the math is ok. An inspection on the 18th should have shown capped queen cells. There was at least a 2 day buffer before the queens should have emerged.


.
This photo from June 16th appears to show a dammaged queen cell. Are the workers building or tearing down?
.
.
.
.
.
Third: I could have missed one of the queen cells raised by the bees from an older larva.

As soon as a virgin queen emerges she hunts down competing queen cells and destroys them. If the bees started raising a queen from larva when the cell builder hive was started on June 8th the bees could have started a queen from larva that was 6 days old (unlikely). That would put queen emergence on the 18th, the same day as my inspection.


Fourth: A queen cell was transferred into the Cell builder when it was created on June 8th.

This seams to be the most likely explanation. A started queen cell (which would have been very small) was inadvertently installed into the cell builder hive when it was assembled. Although the hive was inspected for erroneous queen cells which were destroyed, if one was missed it would have emerged before the 18th, giving the virgin queen time to destroy the cells.

If a queen is found in the cell builder this weekend it will resolve the mystery.

The lesson I’ve learned through this is that it is very important to know how old the larva is when starting a queen cell. The miller method allows queens to be started which could be 3 or 4 days in age apart. When the miller frame is installed in the hive it probably has eggs and larva. The bees can select any age larva to start queen cells from. This means that the queens raised from this larva will emerge at various times, and the queen cells will be in various stages of development throughout the queen rearing procedure. It seams that grafting larva the same age into queen cups would insure that the queens being raised are all within one day of each other in age. If the weather permits I will attempt to graft cells this weekend and continue this experiment.
.
Left: My first virgin queen. This queen was raised by moving a frame of eggs and larva along with two frames of bees into a nuc. The bees raised their own queen. She emerged from her sell just prior to the inspection on June 16th.
.

On a positive note. There was one cell which seamed to be intact. It was installed in a queenless mating nuc. We will see if the queen emerges this weekend as well.

The queen cell started on the 1st of the month and installed in a nuc had emerged. The virgin queen was seen walking around on the comb. If she has mated she will be laying eggs this coming week.

The Mother of All Queens (2)

.
A bee with yellow June Pollen
.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The cold raw June Cape Cod weather finally broke today. It was partly sunny with temperatures in the low 70’s or high 60’s. It has been damp with rain on and off with the night temperatures the past four days falling into the 50’s, Not good weather for honey production. This has been a very difficult season for the bees already.

.
On June 10th there was a break in the weather before the temperature dropped. I took the opportunity to look at the Miller frame of eggs I had installed in the Cell Building Hive (see previous post). 48 hours had past. As you can see in the photo the bees had started drawing out 4 queen cells. I looked through the rest of the hive and removed queen cells from all other frames, about 4 cells.

.

The queen cells on the miller frame are being started from newly hatched eggs. Since the frame only had eggs on it, and not hatched young larva, the queen cells will be moved into queen mating nuc hives on June 19th or 20th.

.

The Miller frame on June 1st prior to it's insertion into the "Mother Queen" hive

.
.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Today (June 15) I had the opportunity to inspect the queen building hive again. I found about 12 good size queen cells on the miller frame.

.

After inspecting the rest of the hive, I removed 4 to 5 queen cells (capped and in the last stages ready to emerge) built on other frames. If I had waited another day or two all my efforts could have been defeated by these cells. It was obvious that there is plenty of royal jelly being produced in the hive. Royal jelly is essential for queen rearing since it is the only food the queens feed on.

.

.

.
The Miller Frame on June 10th. 48 hours after it was removed from the "Mother Queen" hive and inserted into the "Cell Builder" hive. The bees have started to build four queen cells.
.

.

.

.

.

.

The best queens will be raised on lots of royal jelly. These rival cells need to be destroyed in order to insure that they will not emerge and destroy the miller frame queen cells.

.

This miller frame is my controlled frame. I know the age of the eggs and I know which queen (hive properties and genetics) these eggs are from. Since I know the age of the miller frame, I can accurately calculate the date the queen will emerge from theses cells.

.

A queen takes 16 days to develop from egg to larva. Since these eggs were laid on June 7th or 8th, virgin queens will emerge from the queen cells on June 23rd (16th day from egg laying). Since 12 queen cells have been produced I will need 12 mating nucs to place the cells in (one cell per mating nuc) on day 14 (June 21st ).

I spent a few hours painting the mating nuc covers and bottom boards I built a few months ago. They will have to be stocked with bees (2 frames each) on day 13 (June 20th). Once the queens emerge from their cells they will take up to a week to mate and start laying eggs. There is only a 75% success rate in the mating of queens. I have lots of drones (male bees) in my other hives, and I know the beekeeper who has bees less than a mile away from me. There should be plenty of drones in the area for the queens to mate with.

.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few weeks. At this point I am happy with the success of my first effort. Once the daytime temperature reaches 75 to 80 degrees, I am planning to try my hand at grafting queen cells. We will talk about that when the time comes.
.

The Miller Frame 7 days after being inserted into the "Cell Builder" hive. There are 7 queen cells on this side of the frame, and 5 queen cells on the other side.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.
Now an update on honey production. My three strong hives, including the mother queen hive, are starting to store nectar in the honey supers. Two of the hives are now producing round comb honey, one hive is producing liquid honey. Of the other hives, one has been struggling all spring. They are still only on 5 frames in the bottom box of the hive, compared to my best hive which has 24 frames of bees, produced the miller frame of eggs, and donated 6 frames of bees to the queen rearing project.

Not to mention the fact that it was knocked over by me during and inspection!.

.

.

A queen cell produce under uncontrolled conditions.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.
I will be inspecting the hives for swarming preparation this weekend.

.

I will post more results next week.

The Mother Of All Queens

This week was an exciting beekeeping week for me.
.
A swarm of bees high in a scrub pine tree
.


Last Friday I went to visit a fellow beekeeper (John), at his home. He his hive had swarmed a day earlier, and we were going to inspect his hive to see what condition they had been left in. I have never worked with a more gentle bee. We probably did not have to use any smoke or where a veil or gloves.
.
.

A closer look at the swarm
.

Inside the hive we found four queen cells. The hive was started last year, and according to John over-wintered well. Our inspection showed that only 13-14 of the frames in the double brood chamber (of 20 deep frames) had been drawn out. Of course the bees were working on storing honey in the honey super though. The brood chamber was crowded with honey. This is probably the reason the hive swarmed. It was honey bound. Any extra room the bees were making by building comb was being filled with honey. There was no place for the queen to lay, so the bees must have felt crowded even though there were 6 or 7 empty frames in the brood chamber and plenty of space in the honey super. As happens more times than not on Cape Cod, the swarm ended up landing at the top of a large scrub pine tree. It is hard enough getting a swarm out of a scrub pine, never mind them being 80 feet up in the air.
.

John with his bees
.


John had contacted another beekeeper who brought over an empty nuc box and had placed it up in the tree (about 12 feet up) in hopes that the swarm would find it and make it their new home. John would have then had two hives of bees.

On Saturday I worked my bees. Three of the hives were examined for swarm cells. My strong hive had started building cells, but there were no eggs in them. Since there were so many bees I took three frames, Two capped brood and one with eggs and young larva, and placed them in a nuc box with a division board feeder filled with sugar syrup. I assumed that the bees would realize they had no queen and build queen cells from the larva. Empty drawn comb was placed in the old hive where the frames had been taken. Since this strong hive contains the queen I want to breed, I prepared a special frame of foundation and placed it in the center of the brood chamber. I plan to raise new queens (by the miller method) from this frame once the old queen lays eggs in it. I had planned to come back in 4 days to remove the frame, but mother nature delayed me with cold wet weather this week. Temperatures dropped to the low 40’s and it was wet.
.

A special frame (miller method) prepared for raising queens
.


There was a short break in the weather today. Clouds and rain are expected to move in tonight for the weekend. In beekeeping you need to take your opportunities when they come.

My first step was to create a queenless cell builder hive. I spent the winter researching queen rearing, and dreaming about my plans to raise queens for myself and my beekeeping friends. A queenless cell builder hive is a deep box of bees with specific types of frames of bees. The order I used was as follows (from left to right) Open nectar, Capped Brood, Capped Brood, Pollen, Empty space, Eggs & Larva, Empty space, Pollen, Capped Brood, Open nectar.


.

My Cell Bulder Hive notes from this winter.
.


The eggs from the “mother queen” are placed in the empty spaces. I ended up taking frames from my two strongest hives, since I have been concerned they might swarm within the next few weeks. The cell builder needs to be continuously fed, so a hive top bucket feeder was installed on top of the inner cover of the cell builder.

The next step was to examine the “miller” frame I had installed on the 1st, to see if the bees had drawn out the comb, and if the queen had laid eggs in it. Sure enough I pulled out the frame to find the queen walking across it. The bees had drawn out almost the entire frame. There were eggs mixed with nectar in the frame. I gently moved the “mother queen” off the frame into the hive, and placed frame with the eggs into the cell builder.
.

The assembled cell builder with space for eggs. The fifth frame is the miller frame taken from the "mother hive".
.
The order of frames I used is as follows (from left to right) Open nectar, Capped Brood, Capped Brood, Pollen, Empty space (miller frame), Eggs & Larva, Empty space, Pollen, Capped Brood, Open nectar.
.

Now the timing begins. It takes 16 days to raise a queen from egg to adult. I will assume that the frame of eggs is 1 to 2 days old. That means that any queen cells raised from this frame of eggs would be ready to hatch on June 22nd. Each queen cell will need to be placed in a separate mating hive prior to the emergence of the virgin queen. More on that next time.
.


.

The finished cell builder with a hive top feeder and cover.
.

Of course with all these manipulations something was bound to happen. As I was examining the “mother hive” I knocked over four boxes of bees. While my back was turned they tipped over and came crashing down to the ground. Boy were their a lot of bees flying around. It took about half an hour to put the hive back together again with the frames back in their respective places. I did find the “mother queen” and she looked unharmed.
.
.
.
The next hive inspection in a few days will reveal if she is still laying eggs as well as she has been.
.
.

Below. My first "intended" queen cell. This one cell was built by the bees in the Nuc box I created on June 1st. The queen quality cannot be determined because the age of the larva used to create this cell was uncontroled. The cell is capped and should emerge within 5 days.