The honeybee has been such a wonderful piece of evolution.  But in the area
of emergency queen rearing there could have been a better system worked
out. (maybe in a million or so years this whole area will be imporoved).
 
Here is the flaw.  When the queen dies in a colony a number of emergency
queen cells are initiated.  The age of the larvae that are pressed into
service are anywhere from a few hours old to possibly 60 or so hours old.
While older larvae will develop into queens it is generaly reconized that
the older the larvae the more inferior the queen.  Left to their own
devices the  most advanced larvae will hatch first.  Now the first to hatch
(inferior) queen will run around and destroy all of her siblings who are
younger, some of which would have developed into very good queens.  This
"not so good" queen will go through the mating phase and return to her hive
and will likely soon fail in her duties.  As a last desperate act she will
lay an egg or two in existing queen cell cups in the colony.  Now this new
queen will likely be much better than her mother was, but the colony has
raised two queens in succession without any great deal of brood hatching.
The population has taken a nose dive and the colony may not survive.
 
You can come to the rescue!  When you see an emergency cell situation you
can choose one or preferably two of the very youngest cells to keep and
destroy the older ones.  In this way you can insure that the queen that
hatches has been initiated from a very young larvae.
 
You can take advantage of this whole idea when making nucs in the spring.
Instead of raising your own queens let the bees do it. Just prune out the
oldest cells on about the 5th day after you set the nuc up.  Granted, this
proceedure will result in a 10 day delay in the development of the nuc,
but you will not have to dance through the hoops of raising your own queen
cells,  and you certaily won't propigate great gobs of queens with
unrecognised inferior characteristics.  I think may of us have done this in
our "super queen" breeding programs.
 
So much for my "droning" on.
--
tom taylor
Honeywood Bee Supplies
Nipawin, Sask.
-not quite at the end of the earth, but if I get onto my roof I can see it
from here! ;-)
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