Agriculture Reference
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missing. For a while, workers would continue to fan the last of her pheromones around
the hive, and the colony would carry on as usual. But once the colony realized their
queen was missing, things inside the hive would change. His advice was to wait and
check again tomorrow. If the queen did not appear, I would have to get a replacement
queen.
The next day, with great anticipation, I opened up the hive. Still no eggs, still no
queen.IbegantopanicandcontactedMr.Bagain.Hegavemethenameofanotherloc-
al beekeeper who could provide me with a new queen. Good old Eddie lived a couple
of towns over. He was an elderly gentleman who had been keeping bees since what
seemed like the beginning of time. He sold bees and equipment, and he also raised
queens. When I called him up, Eddie told me yes, he did have queens for sale and that I
could come at 3 p.m., when his shop opened. I told him that my queen was lost and that
I was desperate for a new one. I said it had been two days, maybe more, since I'd seen
eggs. He assured me a colony could survive a week without its queen, so mine would
certainly survive until three o'clock that day.
As I waited, I consulted my beekeeping topics about requeening. I read that if a hive
isleftqueenless,afemaleworkerwilleventuallytakeoverthequeen'sdutiesandbegin
laying eggs. This bee is called a
laying worker
. Since worker bees are not capable of
laying fertilized eggs, the laying worker's eggs would become drones. If she's allowed
to continue laying eggs, it wouldn't be long before drone eggs outnumbered the worker
eggs, and since drones cannot gather nectar or make honey, the hive would eventually
collapse.Layingworkerslookjustlikearegularworkers,makingitdifficulttofindand
remove them from the hive before requeening. One way to tell when you have a laying
worker is that each cell has more than the normal single egg. A spotty brood pattern,
drones in worker-sized cells, and eggs not laid at the very bottom of a cell are other in-
dicators.
WhenIarrivedatEddie'splace,therewerealreadyahandfulofbeekeepersclustered
outside, waiting to pick up tools, equipment, and especially queens. Eddie's intimate
shop could hold only four or five people, and the others were asked to wait in the yard.
The conversation among the other beekeepers centered mostly on who'd been chasing
after swarms that year and how this process sets back overall honey production. Eddie
made it perfectly clear that we were not welcome to stop by unannounced and interrupt
himwhilehewastendinghisownthreehundredhivesandmakinghoneydeliveries.He
questioned each beekeeper about what was happening with his or her hives and how he
could help them. I could tell he had been in this business a long time, and he seemed to
know everyone there. A series of questions seemingly needed to be answered, so Eddie
could diagnose each hive's behavior. “When did you last see your queen? Did you see
eggs? Are there any swarm cells?” he asked.
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