Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
If the behavior continues for longer than a month, workers may be laying unfertilized
eggs, foraging will be significantly reduced (when compared to other colonies in your
yard), and there may be no drones. After a month, a colony can remain queenless if
it simply wasn't able to raise a queen. Even if they did produce several supersedure
queens, all can be lost while fighting for supremacy (it happens often enough to men-
tion), or the winning queen can be eaten by a bird while out looking for a mate.
There can be a lot of bumps in the road back to monarchy without your timely inter-
vention.
Emergency Supersedure
One event that requires a colony to produce a new queen is the sudden death, loss, or
severe injury of the current queen. Sudden death can occur if the queen is accidentally
crushed by a beekeeper during a routine colony exam. Loss can also occur when a frame
is removed, and startled by the sudden exposure to light, the queen flies off, looking
for the warm and dark broodnest from which she was suddenly removed. Not a strong
flyer, she can become lost, sometimes not far from home.
Any injury is likely to alter the queen's ability to lay eggs, produce pheromones, and
eat. These deficiencies are immediately evident to the workers because of the constant
attention the queen receives. They may or may not continue tending her, and in a time
as short as one to three days, they react to the reduction or lack of egg-laying, queen
substance, and her other pheromones. These events signal the beginning of queen-re-
placement behavior among the workers. Because of the urgency, this process is referred
to as an emergency supersedure.
During swarm preparation, the colony receives a series of signals and reacts to each
in turn, building up to the finale. Unlike during swarm preparation, workers don't make
queen cell cups during an emergency supersedure, because no queen is available to lay
eggs in them. Instead, the house bees and those actively feeding the brood search for
eggs or the youngest larvae they can find that are still feeding on royal jelly—the spe-
cial diet fed to future queens, which allows complete development of their reproductive
organs.
When eggs or royal jelly fed larvae are located, the wax builders begin building
queen-size cells for them. Because the egg or larvae could only be found in a regular,
horizontal cell on a frame, the queen-size accommodations are built outside the frame's
face and extend down and between adjacent frames. Several of these may be made by
the colony if resources, such as food and larvae of the right age, are available.
Normal Supersedure
The second event that can trigger queen replacement is the normal aging of a queen.
As the queen ages, the sperm she acquired when mating is slowly depleted and eventu-
