HELP! I NEED A QUEEN!

(ACTUALLY, YOU PROBABLY DON’T)

Did you just discover that one of your hives does not have eggs or brood?   It’s time to panic! Get on the phone, get out your wallet, and get a queen back in that colony immediately!! Actually, before you do that, read this article. Your colony is probably going to be just fine without you. And if it won’t be fine, you aren’t going to solve the problem by adding a queen[1]. While it is a normal reaction to think that you should hurry and buy a queen for a broodless hive, jumping to purchase a queen isn’t usually the correct solution for that colony, nor is it the most sustainable way to run your apiary. Before you pick up the phone, determine the following:

1. Why is my colony queenless?

2. How long has my colony been queenless?

3. Am I really sure that the colony is actually queenless?

4. What do I need to do to make the colony queen right and functioning (i.e. do I need to purchase a queen)?

1)   Why is my colony queenless?

There are three ways that colonies lose queens: supercedures, swarms, and CBS (Clumsy Beekeeper Syndrome).

Supercedure

Colonies naturally replace ‘old’ queens. If you did not replace your queen last year, the colony will likely chose to replace her in a process called supercedure. Supercedure is the process where the bees replace queens by killing the old queen, and raising a new one from a cell. In Michigan, where I live, this generally happens in early summer/ late spring- just after swarm season. If your colony is overwintered, but didn’t swarm / still has the original queen, it is common and expected for the bees to replace the queen at this time. If you don’t replace your queens with young ones in the fall, the you should be prepared for colonies to superceded in early spring. Even if you do have young queens some will be superceded because they are injured, sick, not well mated, etc.

We also see that many purchased packages will supercede the purchased queen a few weeks after they become established. I don’t know exactly why this happens, but I have a theory:  

Bees don’t do things randomly – they have cues that guide their behavior. The workers are constantly assessing the queen by evaluating the age structure of the colony. A properly functioning queen will be laying continuously in the spring, and you would have all ages of bees in the hive, in the right proportions.  If she was laying inconsistently, then you would have bees of random ages, and a big break in brood laying. This is what we get in packages, which are randomly shaken together, and the bees experience a brood break. You wouldn’t see this age structure in nature, unless there was a problem with the queen. Think about the scenario in a package – bees from all different colonies and ages just thrown together, and a queen who just starts laying at a really key time in the season. She doesn’t look that great to her colony, but there is no way to explain to the workers to give her a chance, because you justa paid a lot of money for her. They let her lay enough to raise some brood and then they replace her. Queens also get replaced if they are sick or are damaged from transport – if your package was heated at all, or she was sick, then the bees may also supercede around the same time.  It is really common for packages and overwintered colonies with old queens to supercede in late spring/ early summer.

If your colony is from a package started a few weeks ago, or is an overwintered old queen, then they may be in the middle of a supercedure event. In this context you would not see eggs, but there would be room for a queen to lay them - open, clean cells in the middle of the brood nest.

Swarming

In Michigan, our main swarm season is in May. Every spring, good overwintered colonies will split themselves. By June we are mostly/ usuallyout of reproductive swarm season, but we are just getting into crowded swarming season. Many beekeepers in the north underestimate how fast and strong the honey flow turns on, and don’t leave enough space for incoming nectar. In a crowded swarm, the colony splits because their beekeeper has not provided them with enough space. By space, I mean drawn comb above the brood nest. The bees start to fill in the brood nest with nectar, the queen has nowhere to lay, and the colony swarms.

You can tell if the colony has likely swarmed, because there will be a lot of nectar in the broodnest - there will be little or no room for a queen to lay eggs.

Something else/ you killed her

Sometimes you kill a queen when working the hive (it happens to the best of us), or she can die from disease.

In all three of these scenarios, the colony will have started the process of replacing the queen. The bees will take a young larva and feed her to become a queen, a virgin emerges, gets mated, and comes back and everything is just fine - usually. Problems generally arise is when the virgin doesn’t make it back from her mating flight (she gets hit by a car, eaten by a dragonfly, blown off course), and the bees don’t have any more young larvae to make a new queen. In that case the colony is ‘hopelessly queenless’ - they don’t have a queen, and they don’t have the new larvae to make a replacement. In order to know what to do next, we need to determine how long the colony has been queenless.

2)   How long has my colony been queenless?

To understand how long the colony has been queenless, look at the brood.  Remember, that workers are eggs for three days, larvae for 6, and capped for 9 - emerging from their capped cells on day 21 (drones on day 24). You should be able to get some information, even if you can’t tell the exact date. If you see only capped worker brood, then you know that the queen has been gone for at least 9 days, but less than 21. If you see some old larvae, she stopped laying/died/took off about a week ago.

Almost always the colony is fine, and it is the beekeeper’s expectations that are the problem. Usually the process of queen replacement happens just fine, but it takes longer than we expect, so we tend to panic rather than wait patiently. Even worse, beekeepers can mess up the replacement by digging in the hive when there is a delicate cell, a flighty virgin, or a virgin trying to come back from a mating flight. If we know how long the queen has been gone, we would know when we should expect to see here - we can use basic math to tell us when we should start to freak out[2] about not having a queen in the hive.

• Day 1 – Queen death – no more laying in the colony. The bees will raise up a new queen cell, using a young larvae. If the colony is swarming or superceding, they will have started the queen cell before the queen dies.  In an emergency (e.g. you squished her), they will start the next day.

• Day 8 - 14 – the queen emerges from her cell. It takes 16 days for a queen to go from laid to emergence.  Generally they start with a young larvae, so we can expect a new virgin about 2 weeks after the queen is gone.  In a swarm, where they don’t leave until she is capped (day 8 after the egg is laid), she will hatch out in just over a week.

• One week after emergence (Day 15 – 20)– The new virgin gets ready for her mating flights.  She needs about a week to just be a virgin, eat up, harden her wings before she goes out to mate.

We are already 2 -3 weeks out, and the queen may still need 2 weeks to get mated properly! The mating process can happen quickly (replacement after a swarm in great weather), or it can take weeks and weeks if you have a lot of bad weather (like most Michigan springs). This handy figure from Beespoke.info does a nice job of showing just how long it can be.  It is starting to make sense why your mentors and teachers keep harping on you to take good notes, isn’t it!

http://beespoke.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/QueenRearingTimeline.png 

Once the mated queen returns the bees will ready cells, and she can start laying. Remember she will only start with a small patch of eggs, so if you can’t normally see eggs, or you don’t patiently and carefully look in the exact part of the nest where she starts, you may miss them if you look at this stage. 

As you can see, your colony may be without a visible sign of a queen for weeks, but the colony will be just fine with no intervention. Let’s say that you called me for a queen, I took your money, gave you a beautiful mated queen, and you and put her into this hive. The workers would eat out the little candy plug, and then either they kill her or the virgin would kill her. That new queen wouldn’t even stand a chance, and you would have wasted a perfectly good, raised-with-love queen (and your time and money to get her). To avoid that scenario, we have to know if we really are queenless, or if they are just in the process of making a replacement.

3)   Am I really sure that the colony is actually queenless?

Just because you don’t see brood doesn’t mean your colony is queenless. They may be in the process, as described above, or the queen may not have any place to lay. 

Nectar bound

If a colony is nectar bound, the cells that normally would contain brood are filled with nectar. This happens when there is a strong honey flow, a strong colony, and not enough drawn comb on the hive. When there is no space in the hive to put incoming nectar, and the bees put it in the brood nest. Queens need cleaned, polished, empty cells in the broodnest, so if there are no open cells, she can’t lay. Eventually, this will drive the colony to swarm. If this happens, not only will you lose the queen, but the new queen will return, and also won’t have anywhere to lay (and if you buy a queen, she also wouldn’t have anywhere to lay). Your nectar bound hive could have a great queen running around in there, but you won’t see eggs or brood. To remedy this situation, you need to do two things 1) get boxes on there as soon as you can (or extract capped honey), and 2) mark your calendar to get your act together earlier next year. You will need to give them enough room to move the nectar out of the brood nest AND to accommodate all the incoming nectar if the flow is ongoing. If you have a huge colony that swarmed this may be 3 boxes of drawn comb. That seems like a lot, and it is! It is a really clear example of just how far you were behind on supering your over wintered colony!  If you don’t have drawn comb, it is much harder, because they can’t just move nectar onto foundation. You can use a process called ‘checkerboarding’ (https://honeybeesuite.com/how-to-checkerboard-a-hive/), but it will still take time for them to rearrange everything. Make sure you prioritize having drawn comb ready early next year.  

How can you tell if your colony still has a queen when it is nectar bound? You can add a frame of emerging brood, or good drawn comb into the broodnest - giving the queen space to lay. Come back in three days, and you should see eggs. If there are no eggs, then they likely already swarmed, and are in the process of queen replacement.

Protein deprived

Different colonies respond differently to changes in incoming food. Some bees are more ‘thrifty’ than others - meaning that they will quickly shut down brood production when food gets scarce. The bees will actually eat the eggs that the queen is laying. This can be a nice adaptation for bees that survive well in different climates, and if you replace the queen in this context you can be removing some nice genetics. If you see that there is room to lay for the queen, make sure that you also look to see that there is stored pollen. You should see a nice ring of stored pollen around the area of the brood nest, or even some extra frames. If the colony does not have stored pollen (and some honey/nectar), then they are likely starving, and you are likely not queenless, they just aren’t raising young, because the beekeeper is letting their animal starve. In this context, feed them as quickly as possible (sugar water and protein patty), and get out there and plant some flowers and flowering trees.

You can do a test to determine if your colony is actually queenless. Add a frame of eggs and young larvae from another healthy hive into the suspect colony, and come back and check on it in a few days. If your colony is really queenless, then they will start to draw out queen cells. If you see queen cells, you can either wait to let them emerge, or you can then call me for a queen.

4)     What do I need to do to make the colony queen right and functioning (do I need to purchase a queen)?

Be patient.  If your colony is in the process of requeening, the best thing you can do is wait. Use the calendars above, and figure out when the very last day you could expect it to right itself. Write that date down, and put a note on your hive not to open it until that time.  Go have a beer, build frames, watch them coming and going from the entrance, but leave them alone.  If you go digging in the hive too early, you may not get any new information, and you may disrupt a queen cell, an agitated virgin, or a runny new queen. Let them do their thing.  If your colony is hopelessly queenless (no queen and no brood), the worst has already happened.  It can’t get hopelessly queenless-er.  If you catch it now, or if you catch it 2 weeks from now (even if it is a laying worker), the actions are still the same (see below). There is no ‘catching it just in time.’  Either it is fine, and you will come back and there will be a queen, or it is not fine, and you will deal with it. There is no ‘beemergency’ situation where you need to take action today. 

Pay attention to what you see in the brood nest.  “I didn’t see any eggs” is not that informative.  When you look in the brood nest, where you expect to see brood do you see 1) nectar, 2) nothing, or 3) multiple eggs with spotty drone brood. Is there enough food for the colony?

If you see nectar in the brood frames, then make sure they have room to pull it out. If you don’t see pollen, feed them. If you see nothing, then you can put a frame of brood in from a healthy colony to test for queen cells.  If you see signs of laying workers, which is literally the worst case scenario, you can follow the instructions below.

1. Usually, if you wait, the bees just requeen and are fine. 

2. If they aren’t fine, then you can add a frame of eggs, and they can try again, and then are fine. 

3. If they really aren’t fine (laying worker), or you don’t want to take the time for them to raise another queen, then combine them with another hive. If it is small, just add the box to another hive, or shake the bees off the frame in front of another hive.  If it is big, you can combine it by placing it over a functioning colony, with a single sheet of newspaper in between the boxes. Just make sure that the bees up top have an entrance to get in and out.  https://honeybeesuite.com/how-to-combine-colonies-with-newspaper/

Laying worker

If the queen has been gone for long enough that there is no more brood some workers in the colony will start to lay eggs. Because the workers have never mated, the eggs are unfertilized, and can only develop into drones. You can recognize a laying worker colony by multiple eggs in the cell (the workers are enthusiastic, but not talented at laying), and later, but scattered drone brood in cells where workers would normally develop. https://beeinformed.org/2011/05/20/laying-worker-2/

A laying worker colony is genetically dead – they can’t reproduce (swarming, raising new queens) to carry on their genetics as an organism.  If you add a queen to this scenario, the bees will not accept her – they are too far gone and there is no natural mechanism for them to see a queen in a laying worker colony and think that she is okay- It isn’t like a queen would just show up in a tree cavity in a little cage out in nature. Just like the package supercedure scenario, the workers would take one look at the age structure of the colony, and think she is doing a horrible job and kill her. 

IF YOUR COLONY IS HOPELESSLY QUEENLESS, YOU DON’T HAVE A COLONY – YOU HAVE A BOX OF BEES. 

Remember, that a colony is a super organism.  It needs to have a queen, brood of all the right ages, and all the right age worker bees (nurses, house bees, foragers, etc). Just because you have a hive with bees in it doesn’t mean that you have a colony or that it needs to be saved as its own independent organism.  As a sustainable beekeeper, you will always be combining and splitting, so that all your colonies are fully functioning.  You’ll read in some places that you can bring it back by successively adding frames of brood, and then adding a queen. That is true, but what you have done is combined it with another colony (you added brood, nurse bees, and a queen with entirely different genetics), you just did it in a way that was slow and highly laborious).  If you really want to have the extra colony, combine it now, and make a proper split later when it is all healthy and happy.  Don’t try to resurrect a zombie.

Here is another handy resource for troubleshooting a colony with queen cells. - “There are queen cells in my hive - What should I do?”

http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/There-Are-Queen-Cells-In-My-Hive-WBKA-WAG.pdf

[1] I realize as I write this, that my business is to sell queens. It may look like a terrible business decision to talk all my customers out of the product that I sell, but I think of it differently. I don’t want to send my precious, limited, raised with love and care, wonderful queens to their death in a colony that won’t accept them.  I’d rather that they go to a colony where they can shine and really get the job done.  Plus, better educated beekeepers have more fun, and stay in beekeeping longer.  Sustainable apiaries are important for bee health, and for long-term customer relationships!  

[2] Actually, there is never really a time when you will need to freak out when you are queenless. Keep reading, and you’ll see that it always works out fine.