Great unsolved bee mysteries vol. 28.

[Jon]

On Friday I was checking colonies at the association apiary, the site with the drone colonies which is about 250 yards from the site with all the apideas.

It was a lovely sunny afternoon and I had a box open when I noticed a little swarm of bees in the air, like the mating swarms I have witnessed several times at my own apiary. They were circulating about 10 feet up directly above half a dozen colonies packed with drones.
These mating swarms have just a few hundred bees and the bees swirl around in silence rather than the frenetic behaviour of a proper swarm.
After about 10 minutes they started to settle around a fence post. I walked over and an unmarked black queen was running around on the post. The bees started to cluster on the post and the queen flew off it and landed back on it a couple of times.
Fortunately I had an empty apidea with drawn comb with me so I brought it over and placed it on top of the post and the bees soon moved in.

There was one colony on site in a correx box with a virgin queen in it which had emerged about a week before. I checked it and its queen was still there. This was a supersedure with a single cell so definitely not two virgins present.

There is only one apidea with a virgin in it over on the other site and I checked it and it was still in its apidea.

So where did the queen come from?

One possibility is that one of the drone producing colonies is superseding and this was the supersedure queen on a mating flight. From the cut of its gib it could have been a supersedure queen as it was bigger than the ones I have been grafting.
I checked all of the drone colonies in the last 2 weeks and all still had their marked and clipped queens at this point.

I checked the apidea on Sunday and the queen is laying.

Any other possibilities as to its origin?

[gavin]

Any other possibilities as to its origin?

Well, I've been mulling this over for a while and this is what I can come up with:

- anti-Bayer Special Ops from the pony-tailed NI offshoot of the Natural Bee-losing Network decided to confuse you and threw the contents of an Apidea over the hedge. Watch out, its full of Varroa.

- all those fireworks 'n stuff down in London blew an Apidea swarm sky-high somewhere in the Stratford area and it finally came to earth in Belfast

- one of those dotty drawings that the spirit of Jessie Smith interprets reassembled itself into a real queen and she made it to your association apiary after attracting some followers

- the queen is just a genetically modified worker induced by some transgenic bacteria released from a secret lab near you

- one of the drone colonies threw a supercedure queen which took some workers with it on its mating flight. The tricky thing is that they decided to confuse you by stripping down the opened queen cell with great haste, so when you look you'll see no evidence at all

So - look at the drone colonies and if there's nothing much to see, that will have been it.

Loved the Facebook queen picture but sadly can't really re-post it here.

G.

[gavin]

If only Ivor Cutler was still around he'd have written a ditty based on that title you gave.

[fatshark]

So where did the queen come from?


Large dark queen? Well behaved, quiet on the comb, no followers, excellent overwintering, good early build up, no varroa or chalkbrood, tendency to supersede and not swarm, good honey yield? I think it's one that did a bunk from here on Thursday sometime ...

My rigorous selection strategy has achieved all these traits which are unfortunately linked to a 100% absconding rate.

Could I have her back please?

[Jon]

Well I have her in an apidea at home and they tried to abscond this afternoon.
But fortunately I was cute enough to have put a strip of excluder over the apidea entrance having seen this all before and lost quite a few queens in the process.
All the bees were out and in the air for half an hour and the queen and about 20 drones were trapped behind the excluder going buck mad on the front porch of the apidea.
I need to stick this queen in a cage and make up a nuc around it.

Edit
I guess it is possible that she flew in from Orkney with a decent tail wind.

[Jon]

One possibility is that one of the drone producing colonies is superseding and this was the supersedure queen on a mating flight.

I think I have this one sussed.

I checked a colony today just 10 feet away from the fence post where I collected the queen and found this.

1220 1222

The remains of a single supersedure cell.
The photos are not brilliant but it was definitely a cell from which a queen had emerged as opposed to a cell under construction.

But look who was still present.

1221

A queen mated from an Apidea in June 2010. That spot has stayed on well.
This is one of the few I have which is not jet black but I have noticed some of the galtee ones look like this. Anyway this one won Jimbo's Mars bar with a 100% plot (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?153-Your-gallery-of-2D-plots&p=2583&viewfull=1#post2583).

But there were 7 frames of brood including lots of larvae and eggs.
This frame was typical.

1218

I have the daughter in an apidea in my front garden and she is laying in the apidea which confirms she was on a mating flight.

1219

Look how many drones were in this mating swarm - I reckon about 30 in the apidea and these were the unsuccessful ones.
They were trapped behind the excluder when they tried to abscond. The queen was trying to get through the excluder as well.

To prove this 100% I am going to cage the queen from the apidea and make up a nuc with her.
I will then take the contents of the apidea back to the association apiary at dusk with no bees flying and tip the contents out. If they return to this colony it should confirm the origin of the queen.

I have seen queens mating over the apiary so many times now that I am starting to doubt the lore about flying to drone congregation areas. This was the first time I had seen a mating swarm in an apiary other than my own and also the first time from a full colony rather than an apidea.
The coincidence is that the size of the mating swarm, maybe 300-400 bees, approximates the contents of an apidea which would explain why the apideas empty 100% with the virgin queen on the mating flight.

[prakel]

I have seen queens mating over the apiary so many times now that I am starting to doubt the lore about flying to drone congregation areas. This was the first time I had seen a mating swarm in an apiary other than my own and also the first time from a full colony rather than an apidea.
The coincidence is that the size of the mating swarm, maybe 300-400 bees, approximates the contents of an apidea which would explain why the apideas empty 100% with the virgin queen on the mating flight.

There's an interesting observation which I'm sure is going to be worth further research.

[Jon]

The other interesting thing about this queen is that she has never tried to swarm and this is her third season.

[GRIZZLY]

A good one to breed from??

[Jon]

I only had about 1 in 4 of my colonies make queen cells this year.

I did some grafts from her in July last year and I had one daughter which was quickly superseded in September
I grafted quite a bit from this granddaughter earlier in the year and have several of her daughters in nucs.

I used her colony as a drone producer and queenright cell raiser this year.

[prakel]

Some weekend reading:

I was going to post this link in the absconding apidea thread but have since decided that it might better fit a thread with 'mysteries' in the title!

In the Dec '10 through Feb '11 issues of Dr.Wyatt Mangum's excellent column in the ABJ he discussed in detail the behaviour of colony usurpation by European (not African) honeybees. The first two articles are available as excerpts while the final article is still available in full. He has drawn some interesting associations with absconding behaviour.

http://www.americanbeejournal.com/site/epage/132584_828.htm



During early 2009 Dr.Mangum also ran a three part series on absconding behaviour, all three parts are available as excerpts for free.

Willie Robson also notes usurpation of bee colonies -by amm- in his recent book.

[drumgerry]

Sorry to butt into your thread Jon but I'm trying to PM you and your inbox is full mate!