Quote:
Originally Posted by myselff77
Thanks for the update. I find this thread interesting despite having ZERO knowledge in anything related to bee keeping whatsoever. Stupid question of the day: how does one go about acquiring a new/additional queen bee? Do the bees somehow decide who is queen and promote from within? Is it a certain kind of bee that one breeds to be queen? Something else entirely?
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This isn’t stupid at all.
There are a few ways to get a new queen.
1. The bees decide the queen isn’t healthy or producing right. They release a pheromone that tells everyone it’s time to replace her. The build a queen cell that looks like a wax peanut. They add a special enzyme t some pollen and make something called royal jelly. They place that in the cell and then move an egg that is 3 days or younger. When the larva eats that royal jelly, a change happens and it becomes a queen. The queen can live 3_4 years instead of 6~8 weeks. She takes a couple of mating flights, mates with 15~20 drones and returns to the hive. This same process happens if the queen is killed with young eggs available, or when then decide it’s too crowded and want to swarm.
2. You can purchase a mated queen that a producer has tricked the above into happening on a larger scale. It’s pretty impressive to see how it’s done.
3. You can find queen cells in a healthy hive and place those into the hive in need. The first one to hatch hunts down the other cells and kills the competition. You can also purchase queen cells from producers which I also did this last week.
4. You can do a walk away split with 3 frames of bees and larva and the bees will make a queen with method 1.