Singing Queen
Mark and I are learning a lot about beekeeping, and sometimes doing it the hard way. While checking out hive 01 yesterday, we did not come across our marked queen and we did not notice eggs and larvae. Our original queen appears to be gone in hive 01. However, the hive has many queen swarm cells on the frames, maybe up to ten. That seems very odd. Why so many? These queens are completely encapsulated in large cells, as seen in the photo below.
While we were checking the hive, we heard at least one queen "singing", or what in beekeeping terms is called piping. This is an awesome experience to witness. While we did not capture this sound on video, we did find another beekeeper's video post online showing a virgin queen piping: Another Beekeeper's Piping Queen. Watch when the queen pipes, the hive stops working and listens to her. We wonder what she is communicating to them.
We are not sure if the piping we heard was coming from a hatched virgin queen, or if the piping was from a queen within one of the many queen cells in the hive. As we did with hive 03, we will let hive 01 alone to manage their own new queen. We decided not to add a new marked queen to hive 01.
Even though the many queen cells in the hive are swarm cells and not supersedure cells, we are hopeful that the bees will decide to stay in the hive, as we believe they have enough space to expand with four new frames. Our issue now is that time is against us. The last bees that hatched will only live a few weeks, and they are the last generation in the hive. We need a new queen to hatch, mate, return to the hive, and lay eggs in a very short time frame, before her hive has either absconded or died. This is a big risk on our part, but we are willing to give them a chance and no doubt we will learn from our decision. Worse case, we could move a brood frame with larvae from our very healthy hive 04 to hive 01.
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| Queen "swarm" cells are being prepared by the hive. These are peanut-shaped and located on the bottom of the frame. |
We are not sure if the piping we heard was coming from a hatched virgin queen, or if the piping was from a queen within one of the many queen cells in the hive. As we did with hive 03, we will let hive 01 alone to manage their own new queen. We decided not to add a new marked queen to hive 01.
Even though the many queen cells in the hive are swarm cells and not supersedure cells, we are hopeful that the bees will decide to stay in the hive, as we believe they have enough space to expand with four new frames. Our issue now is that time is against us. The last bees that hatched will only live a few weeks, and they are the last generation in the hive. We need a new queen to hatch, mate, return to the hive, and lay eggs in a very short time frame, before her hive has either absconded or died. This is a big risk on our part, but we are willing to give them a chance and no doubt we will learn from our decision. Worse case, we could move a brood frame with larvae from our very healthy hive 04 to hive 01.
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