QUEENLESS IN THE SPRING; WHAT’S HAPPENING

OK, your hives(s) have made it through winter.  Things were looking good, the hive was building upnicely for the honey flow.  Then bam, activity at the entrance is off sharply; the population is way down.  You look inside and the hive appears queenless.  What happened?  Well it could be several things, all of which are out of your control. 

First the queen has an awesome job in the spring.  She must eat her weight in food every day and then pump out more the 1000 eggs each and every day for about 5 months in a row.  First to increase the hive population and then to maintain it until the honey flow is complete in mid-summer. For some queens, especially the older ones, this is too demanding and they fail.  It could be that they run out of stored semen or just old age.  With old age comes a decrease in their pheromone output which can trigger their ejection from the hive.  It seems logical that the queen would fail at this time of maximum effort.  Then it takes the hive roughly 4 weeks to make a replacement providing they recognized the symptoms.

A second reason the hive may go through a decline is that the old queen was too successful and built up the hive to the point of swarming.  Off she goes with the swarm.  Most beekeepers are not aware their hive has swarmed because they have other things to do; like working.  After the swarm leaves the hive must wait while the replacement queen emerges, matures, mates and finally begins laying. This takes roughly 3 weeks. 

In both of these queen replacement scenarios success occurs about 70% of the time.  The other 30% the hive ends up queenless.  In this situation you as a beekeeper can do something.

New packages can also go queenless.  It can be for: 1) the queen not being accepted by the hive, 2) poor mating of the queen, 3) or just queen failure. 

So now what is a beekeeper to do?  First and foremost you need to conduct regular inspections of your hives so you can realize something is amiss.  Mainly it is to verify the hive is queenright (eggs and brood present) on a regular basis. But is also lets you see there are swarm or supercedure queen cells.  These cells inform you something is afoot.   Another good strategy is to mark your queens.  This makes them easier to find and if you see an unmarked queen you know some type of supercedure has occurred.   You can then also schedule a special inspection to verify that the new queen successfully mated and began laying.

It is important to realize your hive is queenless.  Then you can look for signs that a replacement queen is being reared or is already present.  The danger is that if a hive remains queenless for more than about 1 month some of the supposedly non-fertile workers will begin laying drone eggs.  Once the laying workers are in control of the hive it becomes near impossible to requeen the hive.  The laying workers gang up on any introduced queen and either outright kill her or eject her from the hive.  This hive is then lost for the season.  There are numerous schemes such as putting in frames of eggs and brood or shaking out all the bees 100 feet from the hive but these usually fail, because the only thing that suppresses laying workers is a strong queen pheromone.  

HONEY FLOW

The "Nature's Nectar" blog has two articles on the honey flow which is now kicking into high gear. The first short article is about black locust trees which in our area are also in bloom.  The second article concerns how to super your hives for maximum honey production.

http://naturesnectar.blogspot.com/

BEE POLLEN BEER??

Here is a link to a site with instructions to make bee pollen beer.

http://homebrewacademy.com/bee-pollen-saison-recipe/

GOOD INFORMATION

The Nature's Nectar blog has a few good articles concerning entrance reducers and other hive situations.

http://naturesnectar.blogspot.com/

June 1st Hive Report

All beekeepers experience highs and lows and frustration.  It goes with the hobby.  For me it’s no exception.  I just completed my second hive inspection for the season and saw wide variations in the conditions in the hives.

On the plus side I was able to capture four swarms during May.  Actually I captured two swarms and two others captured themselves by occupying vacant equipment.  One of the swarms was so strong it is already putting a little honey in a super.  You can’t beat that.  Also on the plus side is the fact that some hives are putting honey in the supers.  During hive inspections I keep a rough count of filled frames of honey and estimate about 9 gallons of honey so far and the flow hasn’t really gotten underway yet. 

On the minus side I had four hives that swarmed.  In theory the source hives will have a lessened potential for making surplus honey while their populations recover.  You also must monitor those hives to make sure that they successfully re-queen themselves.  Statistically about 1 in 4 does not successfully re-queen.  That fact reinforces the need to continue making hive inspections every other week so you can remedy those hives that do not re-queen before they start having laying workers. 

My few replacement packages did not arrive until early May.  At my first hive inspection all packages were queenright.  However, during the second inspection I noted one new package had lost its queen and had five supercedure cells (also called emergency cells) in process to raise a replacement queen.  I hope this is not a repeat of last year when two thirds of my packages superceded in the spring and summer.  In fact only one of nine packages from last year has its original queen.  That’s not a  good commentary on the US queen rearing industry.

Most overwintered hives have successfully turned the corner and growing.  However, during May I had two hives that must have lost their queen and slowly dwindled away.  Several others have gone queenless, but have supercedure cells.  Whether they will recover in time to produce any honey is questionable.   In June I will restock these hives with homegrown nucs.  The best that can be done now is to start these hives anew to get them ready for next winter.

    

As most of you know I dabble in queen raising.  I was able to raise a few in April, but May was a bust.  To make matters worse my Ankle Biter breeder queen died.  I have a few of her daughters in nucs and am hoping they successfully mate.  I will carry on with raising queens from her daughters.  Hopefully with warmer weather the survival rate of the queen cells will improve.  I will also be raising a few Russian and Saskatraz queens.

We are now going into June.  I see that clover and black locust trees are beginning to bloom.  I am ready to add honey supers as the bees bring in the nectar.  In my area, June through mid-July provides the majority of the honey flow for the year.  

At this point I am behind the curve.  The boom in bee populations also results in a boom in varroa.  I will need to get out to monitor and control varroa populations.  Remember to only use formic acid or oxalic acid treatments while the honey supers are on the hive.  Other mite control products will contaminate your honey.