Introducing Queens - Part 1
In the Maritimes, beekeepers often split overwintered colonies to increase numbers, particularly before sending them to blueberry pollination. Often these splits receive queens, imported from countries having earlier availability due to warmer climates. Later in our season, beekeepers split colonies again to prevent swarming or to make nucleus colonies. To provide queens to these summer splits beekeepers can raise their own, buy local from queen breeders, import from other countries, or re-queen with queen cells. No matter the source, buying or raising queens is expensive and time consuming so finding a successful way to introduce new queens to colonies is important.
Factors that affect the acceptance of a new queen into a colony: condition of the existing queen (age, fecundity, pheromones), condition of the new queen (age, health, time spent not laying, genetics, pheromones), characteristics of the colony (aggressiveness, genetics, ratio of young to old bees, presence of laying workers) and the environment (season, forage availability, climate).
Queens disperse pheromones throughout a colony. Introducing a new queen while the previous queen’s pheromones are still strong may lead to failure in the acceptance of the new queen. Therefore, the first step is to remove the existing queen, or if making a split, make sure the new split is queen-less. Also, confirm there are no queen cells in the hive. To ensure the split does not start making emergency queen cells, use capped brood instead of young larvae/eggs in making the split. Nurse bees accept new queens more readily than older bees, so it is best to make sure the new split colony has a lot of young bees from brood frames. There is some discrepancy on how long a colony should be queen-less before introducing a new queen, but 24 hours is a general rule.
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General rules to follow to maximize queen acceptance |
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The
colony must be queen-less |
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The colony cannot have queen cells |
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The
colony cannot have laying workers |
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The colony must have young nurse bees to feed the queen |
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There
should be a nectar flow, if not, provide sugar syrup |
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The new queen should be in as good or better health than the old queen |
Stay tuned! Next week there will be more on introducing queens as part of our practical queen management segments.
Toxic Wax - Another reason to consider rotating out your old comb!
It is recommended to rotate old comb out of your operation regularly
to maintain healthy bees. Replacing old frames every four or five years is more or less accepted by our region’s beekeepers but how many of us follow this as best practice? New
research out of Belgium* may provide additional motivation to refresh your
comb. Many of the chemicals that bees
are exposed to will accumulate in wax.
Lipophilic (i.e. fat loving) chemical pollutants will build up in the wax over
time and increase the bee’s exposure to these potentially dangerous compounds. This new research shows that all wax contains toxic
pollutants with cappings (new wax) having the lowest levels (see figure 1.). In total, this nation-wide study
found 54 pesticide and veterinary drug residues in bees wax. Chlorfenvinphos (an insecticide and acaricide)
levels were modeled and these were determined to possibly influence bee mortality. This group is also developing an online tool,
BeeToxWax, available to beekeepers to estimate levels of contamination of beeswax. Beekeepers who wish to test their wax for contamination can use their results to determine the overall toxicity of their wax. You
can view the tool at https://www.beetools.uliege.be/beetoxwax/
Figure 1. Graphic abstract Pesticide and veterinary drug
residues in Belgian beeswax: Occurrence, toxicity, and risk to honey bees
Connecting with ATTTA SpecialistsIf you’d like to connect with ATTTA specialists or learn more about our program, you can:
visit our website at https://www.perennia.ca/portfolio-items/honey-bees/
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