Honey Bee Queens’ Exposure to Pesticides Weaken Reproductive Success and Colony Development.

The photo to the right is what we all like to see – a strong hive with lots of bees, capable of producing honey. But what if that is not what we find when we open the hive? What if: 

there appears to be no queen? 

The bees are low in number?

There is no brood?

In other words, the hive is seen to be ‘failing’.

A few years I was producing queens on a very small scale, mainly to supply the hobbyists in the ACT. One thing I noticed is that many people are driven to purchase a queen because they have suddenly discovered a lack of brood in their hive, and realised the hive is queenless. What I then have noticed is that many people are not aware of the steps to follow in re-queening a hive that has been queenless for some time. It is not simply a matter of popping the new queen into the hive, thinking the bees will accept and release her – it is much more complex.

To step back a pace or new, a few things first need
to be established:

1. Why is there no brood in the hive?

2. Is the hive in fact queenless?

3. What is needed in the hive to make the bees more likely to accept the new queen?

 Why is there no brood in the hive?

The following graphic may help:

Is the hive in fact queenless?

Having considered ALL the above options, and having decided that the hive is either queenless or is in drastic need of being re-queened (either due to poor performance, poor temperament, poor disease resistance or just plain failing), what is needed to enhance the chances of the new queen being accepted?

 What is needed?

Consider this. A queen will only be stimulated to lay
eggs when:

Both pollen and nectar are available. If fresh nectar is coming in, the bees will be stimulated to also gather pollen to feed new larvae. If fresh pollen is not available, the bees will use stored pollen from within the hive. If fresh pollen is available, the bees will use stored honey from in the hive as the substitute
for nectar.

The bees (and the queen) will be most stimulated when BOTH fresh pollen and fresh nectar
are available.

When neither is available, but the weather is warmer, stored supplies MAY induce SOME egg-laying, but not a lot. Usually as soon as fresh pollen ceases to be available, the queen will stop laying drone larvae, then stop laying worker larvae, and if the pollen dearth continues, the bees will actually cannibalise the larvae, after which they will reject the drones.

So the first need is for fresh pollen and nectar to be coming into the hive.

The next need to consider is the presence of young
worker bees. Who feeds the queen? Who feeds the developing larvae?

This is the role of the young worker bees. The nurse bees. They do this by producing royal jelly in the hypopharyngeal gland. This is why they need to have fresh pollen coming into the hive. But they are only capable of doing this for the first couple of weeks of their life, after which the gland starts to atrophy.

So if there is no brood in the hive, the queen stopped laying three weeks earlier. If it was five weeks ago that she stopped laying, there are now no longer any nurse bees left in the hive, capable of producing royal jelly to feed the egg-laying queen or the larvae that develop from the eggs
she lays.

This means the next step in ensuring that a new queen is accepted is to add a frame or two of sealed brood AND young bees to the hive, a couple of days before the new queen is inserted (having first made sure fresh pollen and nectar are available – remember that a 1:1 sugar syrup will help here, because it will stimulate the bees to
gather pollen!).

 Choice 1:

These can be taken from another queen-right hive. First find the established queen, and (leaving her in the old hive), remove a couple of frames of brood AND the bees on the frames and insert them in the queenless hive. Continue to feed sugar syrup. Don’t wait more than two days to insert the new queen, and check for the presence of queen cells before inserting the new queen (this is why it is better to add sealed [capped] brood).

Choice 2:

Take the queen from the queen-right hive (H2), together with a couple of frames of brood, and insert them into the middle of the queenless hive. In this case it is not necessary to worry about the presence of young larvae and eggs on the frames, and because this queen is an established one, already laying eggs, the chances of the old bees rejecting her are reduced. They can be minimised by ensuring she is in the middle between the two introduced brood frames, and the risk is minimised even more by placing this ‘nucleus’ above the brood box of the queenless hive, using the paper method to unite the two ‘colonies’.

Now re-queen H2, the formerly queen-right hive from which you have just removed the laying queen and some of her brood and bees, with the newly purchased queen.

In both cases, it would not hurt to feed sugar syrup for a few days, say a week, until the new queens are observed to be laying in each of their respective colonies. This also applies if Choice 1 is utilised.

The addition of frames of bees not only boosts the stock of bees in the weaker queenless hive. It also ensures that there will be bees hatching for a couple of weeks, to fill the gap in brood until new eggs laid by the introduced queen will have developed, pupated and hatched as new workers capable of producing royal jelly. All the missing parts of the equation have been satisfied.

Article by Des Cannon