Queens and Queen Cups

Well the weather is being a little wierd at present, cold and rainy one day then hot and sunny the next. I'm not too keen on the rainy days but the frogs seem to be enjoying them. On the hot days the bees can be seen sallying forth from the hives as they make the most of the weather and the frogs are cool off in the pond under waterlilly leaves.

I recently lost a swarm from Hive2 which was a bit of a blow and after a few weeks with no new eggs being laid I found egg laying had been resumed which told me there was a successfully mated Queen living in there. Last week I was lucky enough to spot her royal madge ambling along on the honey comb. She wasn't too shy so I took a couple of cameraphone shots. She still doesn't look that different to the other tens of thousands of bees which is why beekeepers often put a splot of paint on her back to make her easier to spot.

Spot the Queen.

She's easier to see in this one.

Something beekeepers check for during inspections are whether or not the bees are making new queens. If the bees make a new queen they may swarm and we don't want that to happen for two main reasons: it can scare the crap out of people living nearby and it costs a sizeable chunk of the workforce. n the otherhand if you have an apiary somewhere away from people and a few bait hives dotted about at a decent height you could use swarming as a way to increase your bee stocks. In the city it's definitely something to be avoided.. so there's a few things to look out for during inspections that tell us when the hive is getting swarmy..

During the course of their normal activity the bees build what is called a Queen Cup or Play Cup. This is a round structure protruding from the honeycomb looking a lot like the cup of an acorn -or cupule for any arborists reading this. During the inspections if I see these I have a look inside to make sure they're empty and then break them with a poke from the hive tool, once broken the bees will sort out the comb and hopefully return it to normal.

Queen Cups

As the Queen wanders about laying eggs she'll occassionally reaches a queen cup and lay an egg in it. If the bees aren't wanting to make a new Queen at that point they'll just pull the egg out, however if they do want a Queen they'll start flooding the cup with Royal Jelly.

Royal Jelly is a substance secreted from glands on the honey bee's hypopharynx. I have no idea how royal jelly is farmed but I'm told it's used in pricey skin care products based on the theory that it prevents ageing -of course it's never actually been proven to do that but some people will believe pretty much anything -are you gullible? Send me £10 and find out! I suspect if people knew it was actually gunk secreted from an insect's head they might be less willing to rub it into their skin. I also think anyone with half a brain would be a little skeptical about the anti ageing properties of a substance made by creatures that only lives about 6 weeks. If you do want to stop your skin from aging my suggestion would be to stop slathering insect baby food on your face and drink some water instead. Ground breaking eh?

When the bees have decided to raise a Queen and added Royal Jelly the larvae hatches and has a bit of a feast ahead of it whilst the workers add wax to the cup turning it into a full sized Queen Cell. There's two kinds of Queen Cell, Supercedure Queen Cells and Swarm Queen Cells. A Supercedure cell is created about half way up the honeycomb and the bees make these when they decide to replace the existing queen. She might be getting a little old, not laying enough eggs, not producing enough Queen Substance or perhaps she's eightysix years old and people are starting to wonder if she's ever going to let someone else have a go.  The workers make a few Supercedure Cells and the strongest Queen should hatch first slaughtering the others before they've seen light of day. For that purpose the queen bee has a sting which can be used repeatedly unlike the workers. She'll them head up the colony, sometimes alongside the existing Queen.

Sometimes the bees will decide the Queen about to hatch first isn't the one they want and will reseal the end of the cell as she's trying to cut her way out so a preferred Queen can hatch out and take over. Swarm Queen Cells are generally made at the bottom of the comb and when your bees are making these it means they're preparing to swarm. They'll cut the existing Queen's food intake so she loses weight so she can fly again and at some point possibly before the replacement has hatched she'll fly away with a large contingent of  bees leaving the depleted hive queenless till a swarm Queen hatches and gets mated to replace her.

There's actually a third kind of Queen Cell, but we don't like to see those very often as it generally means someone (as in the beekeeper) has messed up (as in killed the queen). The bees make Emergency Queens when they need a new Queen in a hurry. When making supercedure and swarm queens the bees can take a while to evaluate and choose the best eggs for the job, when it comes to emergency cells they don't have the luxury of time and choose the eggs less carefully sometimes even selecting a young grub to turn into a Queen. It's generally held that a Queen from an emergency cell probably won't be of the same quality as a more conventionally selected queen.

As an addendum the the previous post about visitors to the hive here's another visitor I found a few weeks ago. I'm not sure if it'd been in the hive or not but when I noticed it it was sat on a piece of brace comb I'd removed and was very reluctant to vacate it. I believe it's an adult Birch Shieldbug (Elasmostethus Interstinctus).

Birch Shieldbug sitting on bracecomb.