Queen Bee Posts

Raising Queens vs. Breeding Queens

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Being a provider of queen honeybees carries with it several responsibilities.  First, and always foremost, is to raise quality queens.  Anyone who is raising queens has an obligation to focus on quality in all facets of the queen raising process.  This means paying attention to details and not cutting corners.  From selecting a breeder queen, to grafting larvae, to raising queen cells, to optimizing mating conditions, and all the way to caging and shipping queens, any failure to maintain a high standard of quality can, and likely will, result in the raising of sub-standard queens.

Raising queens, however, is only half of the formula for developing a quality queen.  What is equally important is the breeding of queens.  The queen producer wants queens, but the queen breeder wants more.  The queen breeder wants an improvement in the queen stock.  Therefore, breeding cannot be overlooked as a key component of the queen rearing process.  Most every queen producer, large or small, will start with a good breeder queen.  But this is a long way from selecting heritable properties in the bees from generation to generation.

Breeding queens involves reproducing genetic lines of bees from generation to generation by selecting for specific traits that the beekeeper desires.  It requires both promoting positive traits and removing undesirable traits.  It also requires generational focus on combining the very best of genetic material.  While some queen producers may overlook this part of the formula, fortunately, many conscientious queen producers throughout the years – and continuing through today – have understood the entire breadth and responsibility of raising queens.  These individuals are much more than producers of queens; they are true breeders of quality honeybees.

Can Queen Bees Sting?

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Every queen bee has a stinger, and is fully capable of using it.  Queen bees, however, almost never sting people; they reserve their stinging for other queen bees.

At Wildflower Meadows, we hold, mark and cage tens of thousands of queens each year.  As uncomfortable as it must be for the queens to endure this, they never take it out on our team by stinging us.  Instead, our queens seem to maintain a peaceful and graceful quality.  They don’t even try to sting us.  Our colleagues and friends from other queen producing companies report the same; queens, whatever their genetics, simply don’t sting humans.  In the miniscule times where it has been reported that a queen actually has stung a person, we have heard that the sting is not as painful to a person as that of a worker bee.

This could be that because, unlike a worker bee, a queen bee’s stinger is smooth and not barbed.  Given that a queen bee’s stinger is smooth, this means that she can theoretically sting multiple times without losing her stinger and dying in the process.  This is unlike what happens to a worker bee, which loses her stinger and dies in the process of stinging.

So, what is the point of the queen bee’s stinger?  Her stinger is reserved as a weapon to use against other queens.  Because queen honeybees rarely tolerate other queen bees within their midst, they need a way to attack them with force.  When a queen encounters another queen, the result is often a fight-to-the-death.  In such a fight, a queen’s stinger serves as her primary weapon.  When a queen bee attacks another queen, it is her stinger that delivers the deathblow.

Queens not only sting other active queens, but they also – believe it or not – sting the developing queen pupae inside of queen cells!  Queens are so hostile towards each other that a mature queen will poke her stinger right through the outside casing of a mature queen cell in order to kill the undeveloped future queen inside the cell.  Thank goodness that we beekeepers are not the recipients of this kind of wrath!

Feeding the Queen Bee

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A queen bee, being the queen that she is, is familiar to getting the royal treatment.  Even when it comes to eating, a queen bee is accustomed to being fed by her many attendants.

If you open a beehive and happen to find the queen bee, you will usually notice the queen surrounded by her attendants.  If you continue to look closely, you may even see one of the attending bees step forward and feed the queen mouth-to-mouth.  This is the way that a queen bee normally eats.  A queen honey bee typically eats a predigested blend of nectar or honey fed to her by her loyal court of attendants.

With this kind of care and attention, why would the queen bee need to eat on her own?  She usually does not.  This does not mean, however, that she cannot do so.  Sometimes if a queen bee is hungry enough, she will have no problem dropping her giant head into a honeycomb cell and taking a big drink of nectar.

When we prepare our queen bees for sale, we notice that one of the first things a queen will do when she is placed into a shipping cage is to immediately move to the sugar tube and start eating.  Perhaps this is because the sugar is so tasty and energizing to her.  In this case, she has no problem eating on her own.  Before long, however, we provide the queen with countless attendants in preparation for her shipment.  These attendant bees are always very eager to help.  Once the queen has attendants, she will stop eating on her own and let her attendant bees do all of the work.

In the photo above, a random honeybee dropped from the sky just to have the pleasure of feeding the queen bee!

 

 

 

A Simple Organic Varroa Mite Treatment

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As a queen producer, our goal at Wildflower Meadows is to constantly raise the level of natural varroa mite resistance in our stock with each new generation.  For varroa mite control, we rely on the VSH trait that we continuously breed into our stock.  The VSH trait enables the bees themselves to interfere with the varroa mites’ reproduction cycle, thus lowering the spread of varroa mites in the colony.  The VSH trait controls varroa mites naturally, and we rarely see problems with high mite counts.

From time to time, however, beekeepers ask us if we know of any organic varroa mite treatments that complement the VSH trait in Wildflower Meadows’ VSH-Italian queens.  Our answer is simple:  With Wildflower Meadows’ VSH-Italian queens, you do not need to treat your honeybees for varroa mites.  But, if your goal is to obtain the maximum level of varroa control, we recommend that you consider our simple organic varroa mite treatment.

Wildflower Meadows’ Simple Organic Varroa Mite Treatment *

To understand how this varroa treatment works, it is important to first understand that varroa mites must reproduce inside of a capped brood cell.  They can live inside a colony on the bodies of honeybees, but they cannot reproduce unless they settle inside a capped brood cell for the duration of the brood cell’s life.  When varroa mites are ready to reproduce, they seek out the cells of uncapped larvae that are just about to be capped.  They then enter and hide inside the cells, where they begin their reproductive process once the cells are capped.

Here is the key to controlling varroa reproduction:  If there are no larvae about to be capped, then there is no mite reproduction.  Without larvae being capped, varroa mites have nowhere to go to reproduce.  This is how African honeybees have been able to survive varroa mites so effectively.  Because African honeybees frequently swarm, they regularly create new swarms that often take at least a week or two to get established.  During this swarming period, there is no brood production.  As a result, the varroa mite population in the swarm naturally declines, and the mites have no way of reproducing and gaining a foothold.  The swarm basically starts its new life relatively free of varroa mites.

As beekeepers, we can easily recreate the same broodless conditions inside of our colonies.  The event of requeening is the perfect time to do this.  This simple organic varroa treatment works best during the summer when varroa mite populations are naturally on the rise, and it is an excellent accompaniment to summer or fall requeening.

The simple varroa treatment is to remove the old queen two to three weeks before adding a new Wildflower Meadows’ VSH-Italian queen.  About five days after removing the old queen, seek out and remove any natural queen cells.  Then check again a few days later to make sure that you did not miss any.  This colony can safely stay queenless for two to three weeks and still have a small amount of brood remaining for introducing the new queen two to three weeks later.  While the colony is queenless, new varroa mite reproduction will be impossible.  Many of the adult varroa mite will die of natural causes, while others will be removed by the bees’ normal grooming.  By the time that the new queen begins laying and her larvae reaches the stage of capping, several weeks will have passed.  During this period, the varroa mite population inside the colony will have been greatly reduced.

If you can recreate this two to three weeks’ window of no mite reproduction within your colony, then the varroa mite population will naturally decline, just as it does in a wild swarm, resulting in a relatively “fresh start” for the bees inside the colony.  Then, if after this period of varroa decline, you add a Wildflower Meadows’ VSH-Italian queen, the varroa mite population will continue to stay in check.

* This method is only advised for strong and robust colonies that can afford to be queenless for two to three weeks.  We do not advise this method for weak or dwindling colonies.

Should Attendants Be Removed From The Queen Cage?

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Some beekeepers advise that before introducing a queen honeybee, the attendants that ship with the queen should be removed from the queen cage prior to introduction.  The theory behind this idea is that the colony that is receiving the new queen might perceive the queen’s attendants as belonging to a separate colony, and therefore start fighting among the bees and possibly injure the new queen along the way.

While this, of course, is theoretically possible, in actuality there is little to no evidence that this really happens.  Beekeepers around the world successfully introduce hundreds of thousands of queens with attendants inside of the queen cages every year, and have done so for countless years without difficulty.  The truth is that, when introduced, the queen pheromone spreads throughout the colony, both through the attendant bees and the colony’s existing bees.  In very short order all of the bees will smell the same.

The far greater risk lies with trying to remove the attendants from the queen cage, while at the same time ensuring that the new queen stays inside the cage.  Even for experienced beekeepers this is not always an easy task.  It is not uncommon for a well-intentioned beekeeper to accidentally injure a queen bee by inadvertently closing the door of the queen cage on one of her fragile legs and/or antennae, or otherwise mishandle her while trying to remove the attendants.  And, how many well-intentioned beekeepers have tried to remove the attendants from the queen cage, and accidentally allow the queen to fly out of the queen cage, to be lost forever?  It is simply much safer to leave the new queen in her queen cage with her attendants, who are already taking excellent care of her.

At Wildflower Meadows, we purposely select young nurse bees as the attendants that we include with our queen bees for sale.  We do this for the primary reason that we believe that young nurse bees are more instinctively inclined to attend to the new queen, and therefore make more conscientious attendants to the queen during shipment and queen introduction.

Attendant bees won’t hurt the queen, and they won’t hurt your colony’s bees, so why not let them be introduced with the new queen?

Optimum genetics

How Long Does A Queen Bee Live?

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A queen honeybee can theoretically live up to five years, although the average queen bee lives for approximately two-to-three years.  Queen bees are usually at their most industrious and vigorous in years one and two.  This is one of the main reasons that many beekeepers replace the queens in their colonies after the first or second year of the queen’s life.

A young queen bee is generally more active than an older queen bee.  As a queen bee ages, her egg laying production steadily declines.  She will generally lay fewer eggs per day so that by her third year, her egg laying becomes noticeably less vigorous.  Eventually, a queen honeybee may stop laying eggs completely, or will begin to fill worker cells with unfertilized drone eggs.  This is the sign of a failing queen.  Normally the queen’s colony will notice this decline and begin raising supercedure queen cells to replace the failing queen.

By the time a queen bee reaches her second or third year, she may also look shinier than a younger queen.  This is because a queen’s attendant bees have been constantly grooming and rubbing against her for her entire lifetime!  Over time, this steady attention causes the queen bee’s hairs to fall off on her thorax and abdomen – it seems that queens, like many humans, lose their hair as they age too.

However, even though an older queen may not be as productive as a younger queen, this does not mean that she is not valuable.  At Wildflower Meadows, we prize many of our older queens – especially the highly productive ones.  An older and highly productive queen has demonstrated an inherent vitality that makes her an excellent source of quality drone bees, as well as a fine candidate to possibly become the mother of an artificially inseminated breeder queen for future generations to come.

Queen Spotting

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We are pleased to announce the release of a new book about our favorite subject, queen honeybees!  The book, titled “QueenSpotting”, is authored by our friend and fellow beekeeper, Hilary Kearney of Girl Next Door Honey.

Queen spotting, in fact, is what this book is all about.  Hilary challenges readers to “spot the queen” with 48 fold-out visual puzzles — vivid up-close photos of the queen hidden among her many subjects — as well as queen bee chronicles of royal hive happenings such as The Virgin Death Match, The Nuptual Flight (when the queen mates with a cloud of male drones high in the air), and the dramatic Exodus of the Swarm from the hive.

As we all know, whether in a live situation or in a photo, it is not always easy to spot the queen bee.  If you have difficulty spotting queen bees in your colonies, then this book is an enjoyable way to gain some practice and confidence with your queen spotting skills, all while being entertained in what Hilary hopes is a more relaxing environment than with impatient bees buzzing around your head!

“QueenSpotting” also features a section on Wildflower Meadows, entitled “The Experts”, which includes an account of our team members in action, finding and marking Wildflower Meadows’ VSH-Italian queen bees.

For further information about “QueenSpotting,” please visit Girl Next Door Honey.

How Far Does A Queen Bee Fly To Mate?

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Even though a queen bee is obviously different from the average worker bee, she maintains all the flying and navigational ability of a worker bee.  This is important because virgin queen bees need to fly to be able to mate outside of the hive.  A virgin queen bee will never mate inside of her own hive as she needs to take flight to mate.  By mating during flight, a queen bee is able to increase the odds that she will mate with drones that did not originate from her own colony, and thereby minimize the chances of inbreeding appearing in the next generation.

After a series of orientation flights, a virgin queen bee sets out for mating somewhere between the 5th and 14th day after her emergence from her queen cell.  From our experience, most of our Wildflower Meadows’ VSH-Italian queens usually mate on the 7th or 8th day after emergence.

A virgin queen does not necessarily take just one mating flight.  Since she typically mates with up to 15 drones, sometimes she requires more than one mating flight to mate with the right number of drones.  A queen bee’s individual mating flight lasts approximately five to thirty minutes, depending on how quickly she encounters drones, and on the weather.  Warmer weather usually means that more drones are flying, so the queen may stay out flying longer if the conditions are favorable.

During a mating flight, a queen bee can fly a considerable distance depending on whether she is able to find drones with which to mate.  Also, the drones themselves are flying between one to three miles from their hives to nearby drone congregation areas where they too are looking for queens.  The queens can also theoretically fly about the same distance when looking for drones.  In theory, that means that a drone can potentially mate with a queen that is 6 miles away!  In actuality, however, on average, most mating flights occur within a mile of the virgin queen’s home colony.  If a queen encounters a drone congregation area right away, the mating can take place very close to the queen’s home colony.  If she cannot find drones, the queen can fly up to the maximum distance while out looking for drones.

Herein lies the answer to our question:  How far does a queen bee fly to mate?  It depends on how quickly she finds drones, or how quickly the drones find her!

At Wildflower Meadows, our number one focus is producing the highest quality VSH-Italian queen bees for sale.  Accordingly, we think a lot about how to create the most ideal mating conditions for our virgin queens.  That includes flooding mating areas with as many drones as possible.  Our drone production colonies are usually spread about a mile apart in various directions from our mating yards.  Our goal is to create a radius of drones around the virgin queens, so that they do not have to fly too far for mating.  Our positioning strategy also ensures that our queens are most likely to mate with our own Wildflower Meadows’ drones of known optimum genetics.

Optimum genetics

Italian Queen Bees

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Italian queen bees make up the heart of the American beekeeping industry.  They are well known for their gentle disposition, abundant brood production, and the excellent foraging abilities of their workers.

Originating in the Apennine Peninsula of (obviously) Italy, Italian queen bees were originally introduced into the United States in the late 1850’s.  As they say, “the rest is history.”  Up until the introduction of Italian queen bees, American beekeepers favored the German honeybee, which was darker, less resistant to disease, and aggressive.  Who wouldn’t prefer the pleasant qualities of the Italian honeybees to that?  Sure enough, given their genetic advantages of solid brood production, excellent foraging, and gentleness, Italian queen honeybees and their respective Italian bees, have been a staple of American beekeeping ever since.

While by far the most popular race of bees in US beekeeping, Italian queen bees are not perfect.  Some of their strengths are also the root of their weaknesses.  Their continuous brood production can sometimes result in the overshooting of their optimal population, especially once a honey flow comes to an end.  Sometimes, Italian queens may overproduce brood during times of dearth and cold weather, which can lead to a greater need for supplemental feeding of the colony.  If ignored by the beekeeper during these times of dearth, Italian honeybees can overshoot their optimal population and then become susceptible to starvation.

In recent years, with the ever-increasing demands of the California almond pollination, Italian queen bees have become even more vital to the United States beekeeping industry.  Pollination of almonds takes place in early to mid-February each year, and requires upwards of two thirds of the entire US bee population to successfully pollinate a single year’s almond crop.  Obviously, February is an especially early time of year for a typical honeybee colony to be up to the level of strength of field force necessary to pollinate a commercial crop.  Thus, enter the Italian queen bee!

The Italian queen bee doesn’t care what time of year it is, as she is always ready to lay more brood.  It is no wonder that the vast majority of commercial beekeepers who pollinate almonds select Italian queen bees for their operations.

At Wildflower Meadows, we too have come to love and respect the venerable Italian queen bee and her wonderful traits.  All of our VSH queen bees are crossed with Italian stock to create our Wildflower Meadows’ VSH-Italian queen bees.

Artificial Insemination Of VSH Queen Honeybees

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It is surprising to us that the majority of queen breeders do not take advantage of the well-known and long-established tool of artificial insemination.  Even more surprising is that most queen breeders choose to ignore the proven advantages of directly adding the VSH trait to their breeder stock.  By ignoring the valuable tool of artificial insemination and the VSH trait, many queen breeders select stock relatively haphazardly with little or no knowledge of the source of the drones that influence not only the behavior of the breeder queens themselves, but also of the daughter queens that end up being sold to the public throughout the season.

Artificial insemination has been utilized by livestock breeders of farm animals for nearly 70 years, and has been available to queen honeybee breeders for nearly as long.  Its advantages are obvious and many, especially when it comes to honeybees, which naturally mate with multiple unknown drones in an uncontrolled environment (the sky).  Artificial insemination allows a conscientious queen breeder to control mating and to mate specific drones to specific queens.  This enables the breeder to directly select the desired genetic traits in the offspring, such as the VSH trait, gentleness traits, honey production, disease resistance and color.  Without artificial insemination, a queen breeder has no first-hand knowledge of the genetics in the breeder queen that are being passed along to the next several generations.

At Wildflower Meadows, all of our breeder queens are artificially inseminated with hand-selected VSH drones from proven, gentle and highly productive colonies.  This provides the core genetic footprint of our operation and allows us to continue to build and improve the Wildflower Meadows brand of VSH-Italian queen bees with each successive generation.

In the above photo Tom Glenn, legendary VSH queen breeder, artificially inseminates a Wildflower Meadows’ champion breeder queen.