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I have just been reading suggestions re causes of supercedure and the final one has left me a bit baffled ... a throwaway line of ' if the queen does not start to lay after 21 days after intrododucing a package to a new hive '.... where do the bees get the eggs from with which to supercede the non laying queen? or are they trying to supercede with workers eggs ? ....any thoughts?
so thats a dont know either then?
Baffled too. I'd have thought packages would have introduced mated queens laying within days (not that I've ever dream of getting a package).
If you introduce a virgin (or let a natural one hatch) then they would normally start laying after around 3 weeks, plus or minus a fortnight. Depends partly on the strength of the colony and the amount of brood to hatch. Queens that come into lay after 4-5 weeks can be very good ones and not supercedure candidates.
However your author sounds very confused. Give him/her 2/10 and get a different book, if it was a book.
Gavin
I think the author must be saying 'supersedure' when he means replacement. ( ie the beekeeper puts in a replacement queen rather than the bees rearing one themselves.
Other than that, it makes no sense.
An introduced queen in a package which has not produced brood within 21 days has almost certainly been killed on introduction.
You would be supposed to wait for a while before checking, but in a situation like this I would check for eggs after 5-7 days.
A newly introduced queen can be balled if you look too early as full acceptance can take a while.
I have no experience of package bees but I have made up plenty of nucs by introducing a mated queen to a few frames of bees and brood.
I imagine it is a US book if it is talking about packages although I think Easybee still sell packages made up of bees and imported Carniolan queens.
well spotted re continent.... it was Morse who said it....but I have seen it in an article somewhere ele but I forget where.....(been doing a lot of reading recently.......) can now concentrate on hands on ... hey ho til the next time
If the (package) queen is dead and there is no way that the workers can produce a queencell then you'll get laying workers. (At least with a nuc the colony can raise their own queen even if a bit small). The presence of brood inhibits laying worker development as well as a queen of course. I don't know if the 21 days (mistakenly) refers to the 3 weeks that brood could be available in a more usual colony or if it takes - say - up to 3 more weeks for laying workers to start their feindish activity.
The acitivity of laying workers will produce loads of drones and the colony will die out. I guess genetically the swamping of the area with drones is a way of ensuring that colony reproduces and survives - sort of??
Cue Jon with genetics...
Adam