Just this week, I opened a hive that has been problematic all season. It was started as a walk away split in May. Unlike the others, it did not successfully requeen itself. I gave brood but it wouldn't raise cells. Finally I added a queen that I obtained from a feral swarm. They accepted it, and filled the hive with brood. But now, they are trying to supersede her. I saw two queen cells that had gaping holes in the side, the sign of a virgin attempting to kill her rivals. I also found an unemerged cell in which the bees had confined a spare queen. When I released her it was plain she had been in there a while. 

> In honey bees the simultaneous presence of several emerged virgin queens in the period preceding afterswarming, is prevented by a delay of emergence of all queens but one. In this way fighting between queens is avoided. The processes responsible for this delay were studied. The significance of the tooting sounds produced by the emerged virgin queen was examined. Queens ready to emerge cut a cap of their cells. In isolated queens this activity was interrupted by replay of recorded tooting. Consequently their emergence was delayed for several hours. If, however, queen cells in observation hives were exposed to tooting, the emergence of queens was much more delayed, because in this situation worker bees confine the queens in their cells.

INFLUENCES OF QUEEN PIPING AND WORKER BEHAVIOUR ON THE TIMING OF EMERGENCE OF HONEY BEE QUEENS
H.J. GROOTERS, Zoological Laboratory, University of Groningen Kerklaan 30, 9751 NN Haren, The Netherlands
INSECTES SOCIAUX
Volume 34, Number 3 (1987), 181-193, DOI: 10.1007/BF02224083

* * *

> The behaviour of young honeybee queens and of worker bees was studied in an observation hive. Tooting and quacking signals emitted by the queens were recorded as airborne sound and as substrate vibrations of the combs by means of a microphone and a laser vibrometer, respectively. Recordings of the vibration of cells in which queens were confined allowed us to measure the threshold for the release of quacking in the confined queens by artificial toots and by natural toots from emerged queens. Artificial toots with long syllable rise time are more efficient in releasing quacking responses than are toots with short syllable rise time.

The tooting and quacking vibration signals of honeybee queens: a quantitative analysis
Axel Michelsen, Wolfgang H. Kirchner, Bent Bach Andersen and Martin Lindauer
JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY A: NEUROETHOLOGY, SENSORY, NEURAL, AND BEHAVIORAL PHYSIOLOGY
Volume 158, Number 5 (1986), 605-611, DOI: 10.1007/BF00603817

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