Kathy,
        Thanks for your suggested explanations.  Yes, she was marked.
When I said "unusual color", I was referring to the MARK that made me
notice her coming in for a landing.  And I ruled out that she was a new
marked queen because there were no other queens in the hive.
        And if it was a mating flight, it seems she wouldn't be very
successsful this time of year because I'm in an urban area where
beekeeping is illegal.
 
        Rich
 
On Mon, 12 Jan 1998, Kathy Hough wrote:
> Unless the Kona
> queen you introduced in October was marked and you clearly saw that
> marking on the queen that was re-entering the hive, I would bet that the
> queen that you saw entering the colony was a daughter of the queen you
> introduced in October.  It seems unlikely that the queen that you
> installed in October, even if she was unmated when you introduced her
> would have waited until now to make her mating flights.  It strikes me
> as much more likely that the bees found your fall queen to be deficient
> in some way and superceded her and you saw a young queen returning from
> a mating flight.
>
> It's my experience that supercedure of fall introduced queens is not
> that uncommon. On a  few occasions we've needed to requeen in the fall
> and have observed that even a new queen with a quality laying pattern
> (nice and tight) has been superceded in the spring...  my guess is that
> she can't produce sufficient quantity of eggs for spring build-up.
>
> I've heard a number of explanations for this, though I can see that some
> of them may or may not apply to LA or Hawaii.  The first is that in the
> fall (here), the quantity/quality of incoming nectar and pollen coupled
> with dwindling numbers of young brood food producing workers (as the
> hive focus shifts from reproduction to winter survival) produce less
> robust queens. The second is that the weather (here) is rainy and cool
> and results in poorly mated queens.  The third is that, in an effort to
> mitigate these negative effects of fall breeding (here), folks "bank"
> (hold in queen cages) spring bred and mated queens for introduction in
> the fall.  This "banking" for very long causes the queen's viability to
> deteriorate (forget where I read that, but it made sense to me).  The
> fourth reason is that there is a period of broodlessness (here) from
> about early October through early January which in effect "banks" that
> new young queen (though-i think- not as stressfully as caging does).  I
> guess that's why buying fall queens is less expensive than spring
> queens.
>
> Anyway, I wouldn't worry about it too much so long as you are getting
> good weather for mating flights and have sufficient drones in the area
> to get the job done...  Watch her brood pattern closely this spring
> tho..  sometimes the bees choose an older than ideal larvae and even if
> she's mated well, she may not perform sufficiently for honey surplus.
>
> On a side note:  Anyone else on the list know who has studied the effect
> of preventing a newly mated queen from laying and whether anyone has
> compared that effect to to the same for a queen whose been laying for a
> period of time-say a season?  Does it have as detrimental an effect as
> what i (vaguely) remember reading? For both newly mated and "seasoned"
> queens at the same rate?...  My suspicion would be that the seasoned
> queen's body would experience the time as more of a rest and the newly
> mated queen's body would experience the time as frustrating a strong
> urge  (look out!-she's gonna blow!  :^)... though maybe the whole
> process isn't stressful at all if the egg-laying tapers off and tapers
> back up again (rather than the barrier/cage method of instant
> off/instant on).
>
> Kathy
> (who's going to going to do some reading this afternoon to see if she
> can find some of the answers to these questions..)
>
>
>
> wd6esz wrote:
>
> > Premise:
> >         I had a late season accident and lost a queen in October.  I
> > since
> > bought a mated queen from Kona Queen and thought everything was fine.
> > Today I was out looking at the hive and saw an unusual color bee
> > flying in
> > for a landing.  Upon further inspection, it was the QUEEN.  I am in
> > Southern California.
> > Question:
> >         What was she doing out?  And at this time of year?
> >
> >         TIA,
> >
> >                 Rich
>