Stories from the Hives

A New Queen Arrives

June 22, 2023 by Amanda Konen-Port

A few days ago, we discovered that one of our swarm colonies had an abnormally large number of male eggs, but no signs of female eggs. That could only mean one thing: no queen. Male eggs are distinguishable from female eggs because they protrude from the comb like little bubbles, whereas the female eggs are flat. When there is no queen present, the worker bees attempt to produce one. However, because they are not inseminated, they only lay male eggs.

If a queen had been present but died or otherwise left the hive, there would have been female eggs along with the male eggs. The nurse bees would then be able to transform a female worker egg into a queen cell by feeding her extra amounts of royal jelly, the special secretion fed to all larvae. As this was not the case, it was time for us to intervene.

A frame with only male eggs - a sure sign of a queenless hive.

We don’t have any spare queens at the moment, so we reached out to the Station Fecondation de L’Abeille Noire de Mormal (a fertilization zone for native black bees in the Mormal forest) to purchase a native black bee queen. This particular queen is the daughter of a queen from the Chimay Black Bee Conservatory, and we are very excited to have her in our apiary.

We are working towards an apiary comprised solely of the native black bee of our region, L’Abeille Noire de L’Avesnois. It is our mission to protect and propagate this subspecies because they are more well-adapted to our region. In particular, they are able to withstand long winters with less food. Unfortunately, many beekeepers in our area have been buying and raising the nonlocal Buckfast bees because they have been bred to be more docile and produce more honey. Buckfast bees need to be fed throughout the winter, and are less adapted to the region, meaning a higher chance of mortality and in turn, more disruption of the ecosystem.

The cell of the black bee queen, ready to be installed in the hive.

As seen in the photo below, the cell is wrapped in a bit of tin foil before installation. Normally this is only necessary when another queen or other queen cells are present, because as soon as a queen is born, the workers will sting any other unborn queens through their cells to kill them. We wrapped it as a precaution even though she is the only cell present in the hive. You might also note flat eggs on this frame. That’s because we took a frame of eggs and bees from a thriving hive and transferred it to this weaker colony. This will give the hive and their new queen the best chance of survival, as the newly hatched females will feed the queen better than older ones.

The queen cell installed on a frame of female eggs and bees that was transferred to this hive from a stronger colony in our apiary.

In 2 days, we will take the entire ruchette to the fertilization zone, where it will remain for about 2 weeks. During that 2-week period, with luck, the new virgin queen will fly out of the hive and be inseminated by the black bee males in the area. She could also be inseminated by the drones in our apiary, but by placing her in the fertilization zone, she is sure to be inseminated by a black bee from a different gene pool. This improves the overall health of the bees and ensures that the eggs will be black bees. Wish her majesty luck on her upcoming adventure. We can’t wait to share an update on this hive with you soon.

Long live the queen!