Queens: supersedure, emergencies and laying workers

It's early August. Anne opens her second hive and something is wrong. There are no eggs anywhere. No young larvae. And on the face of one frame, three small, scruffy queen cells built right into the middle of the comb. Where is her queen? And what are the bees doing?

A colony raises new queens for three different reasons, and the cells tell you which one you're looking at.

The first is swarming, which we covered two lectures ago: many large cells, mostly along the bottom and side edges of the brood frames.

The second is supersedure. The bees have decided their queen is failing, perhaps from age, disease or high mite levels, and they replace her themselves. There are usually fewer, smaller cells, and the brood pattern is often patchy. Judge supersedure by the situation, not by where the cells sit on the frame.

The third is an emergency. The queen has suddenly died or been lost, perhaps crushed during an inspection. The workers pick larvae already in worker cells and start feeding them as queens. Emergency cells are small and scattered across the frames, sometimes built into the comb itself, like Anne's. The queens they make are often smaller, because some of those larvae were already too old.

That's what happened in Anne's hive. No eggs and no young larvae means no laying queen for several days. The emergency cells mean the bees are already fixing it. Her best move is patience. Let them finish, check for eggs in a few weeks, and don't disturb the new queen while she makes her mating flights.

You can learn to recognise queen cells at a glance. An open, round cup is normal. An active cell has a rough texture, like a peanut shell. A cell with a neat opening at the bottom has hatched. A cell opened from the side was destroyed, usually by the first new queen to emerge, who kills her rivals.

Now let's change one fact. Suppose Anne's colony had been queenless much longer, with no young larvae left to raise a queen from. Some workers start laying. Their eggs are unfertilized, so they become drones. You'll see only drone brood, and several eggs in a cell, often stuck to the walls instead of the bottom. That's a laying worker colony, and a new queen on her own is usually rejected.

The usual fixes are to shake the bees off in front of the hive and add a nucleus colony, or to shake the whole colony out, well away from your healthy hives.

Replacing a queen yourself, called requeening, makes sense when she lays poorly or the colony is very defensive. Do it earlier in the season, because a requeening that fails in late summer or fall can cost you the colony going into winter. Poor queens were one of the top four causes of Ontario winter losses in twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five.

One last trick. Breeders mark queens with a dot of paint whose colour tells the year. White for years ending in one or six, yellow for two or seven, red for three or eight, green for four or nine, and blue for five or zero. Remember it as: Will You Raise Good Bees. A queen from twenty twenty six is white.

The mistake beginners make is buying a new queen the moment they can't find the old one. Look for eggs first, then check the queen cells. They'll tell you what's going on.

Here is the rule, in one breath. Many large cells on the frame edges mean swarming, a few cells and patchy brood mean supersedure, small scattered cells mean an emergency, and only drone brood with several eggs per cell means laying workers.

That's the end of module eight. Next, the reward: knowing when your honey is ready.