Andrea's Bees: The Virgin Queen

June 19, 2014

I stayed home from work on this glorious day to go into Mab. I needed to make sure she wasn't starting to dream of heading out too. She is doing so well. I went through to the bottom and not one queen cell to be found. I did find an empty queen cup on one frame but no worries there. I added many open frames and added 2 boxes on top so Mab is 6 boxes high now. I didn't find her majesty but everything looks ship shape.

Going into Queen Mab

I then went over to the new hive to see what was happening. In the top box I found an empty queen cell that clearly had hatched a queen. I didn't find her so I kept on going. In the bottom box I found another empty queen cell that had been gnawed open. Right beside this open cell was a capped cell.

Open queen cell, vacated by queen and capped cell on right

Further along the same frame I found a murdered queen. You can see the hole where the queen opened it up and then stung the young queen in her cell. Better than Shakespeare!

Capped queen cell bitten open and killed by queen

Now that there was evidence that a queen had hatched I started looking for her. A virgin queen is very small so she is hard to distinguish from the workers. As well she can move really fast. I found her wandering through the frame. She was moving quite quickly over and under all the bees on the frame as she oriented herself to her hive.

Virgin queen on right at the top of frame

This queen will orient herself to the hive for about a week and then head out into the wilds for fertilization. She will fly to areas where drones hang out waiting for virgins which is called a Drone Congregation Area (DCA). There the queen will be fertilized by 14-18 drones. She will fly very fast and very high and the drones that can catch up with her will be the "lucky" ones to fertilize her. You may remember from some of my educational posts that the "lucky" drones actually have their genitals torn out in the action and then fall to the earth...dead. The queen then will come back to the hive and within a few days will start laying. So, by my reckoning, she will be heading out June 26 and then will be ready to start laying around July 1. What I am really curious about is whether there is another virgin queen wandering around this hive and whether the rest of the capped queen cells have been murdered. I will probably go in again in a couple of days just to see.

What is happening in the garden during all the excitement, you ask?