The summer of... queen issues

The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen! ... or is she?

As a hobbyist I don't have many colonies, so every colony is important. Coming out of winter 2023-24, I had five colonies survive, a 100% survival rate. The previous year I had made testing for and treating mites my top priority. The secondary priority was nutrition and getting the colonies to proper weight before temperatures consistently sat below the 50° F (4° C) threshold. In early sprint, ss some days warmed to 40°F (10° C) with full sun, the colonies came alive. I saw an uptick in waste flights and observed waste in the snow (and on my vehicles). As February ended and March began, data I started to see showed an estimated brood rearing increase as brood temperature increased.

Data insight on a graph is one thing, but personal observations are another. So I watched. As I watched the colonies each day, I could see massive amounts of pollen coming in as the spring equinox approached and then passed. I now knew they were queenright and ramping up brood rearing.

As March ended and we entered April I began to manage for swarms. Due to travel and human-error (missing a couple of queen cells in my inspections), a couple of my colonies swarmed. Luckily, those swarms were caught without incident. A couple of splits were also created to mitigate swarm preparations (queen cups) observed. After less than a week, both the splits [and caught swarms] were doing very well. At this point in time that my queen issues started. Right as the flow started.

Both of my two main colonies that I split, created queens quickly. Eggs were chosen, larvae fed and matured, cups were sealed. In fact one evening as I made the rounds just after twilight, I heard one of the colonies (screen grab above) had a queen that was piping. It was loud enough I could hear it through the hive walls;

Queen Piping (May 11, 2024) - Headphones recommended

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Several days later, as I checked on both colonies, both had virgin queens. However, a check again a couple of weeks later showed that neither colony had a queen. Not a trace. It appeared that neither queen had made it back from their nuptial flights as there were no eggs to be seen. (I usually leave it to several days after when I think she should be laying to make sure). In this apiary there are dragon files, yellowjackets, and a pair of Western Kingbirds that, at times, all feast on the bees. Perhaps they were eaten or even lost their way home. Regardless, at this point there were no eggs left in either hive. They were hopelessly queenless.

Since I am a hobbyist, it is either my time or my money. Often times both! The honey flow was getting very close so I decided to learn (use my time) rather than buy queens and focus on honey production. I had let the bees raise queens before, but this time I dove into it, read about lifecycle, watched videos, and watched the bees carefully. (Note, that both colonies, still produced a bit over 60 pounds of honey, even though they were queenless throw the flow). I pulled a few frames of nurse bees, brood, and eggs from my resource hives and loaded out these two hives with resources to let them make a new queen. Admittedly one of the hives took a second round of larvae to get them to pull cells. Checking on them a few days after I added the frames and both hives were pulling cells. Around 4-9 larvae, in each hive, had been selected and were being prepared.

Finally, checking again in July, both colonies have queens. However, there seems to be yet another issue at play now. One queen seems to still be a virgin (or poorly mated) and the other queen is damaged. One wing was mostly gone, which I observed during my first inspection for queenrightness. Then, two weeks later, both of her wings are gone. So the damage was most likely caused on her nuptial flights or after. Perhaps by the bees balling her? Now I know that I am not unique here... there are many people who have dealt with this and many more that will deal with it in the future. It is exciting because it is a wonderful learning experience.

The damaged queen is laying mostly well, but her pattern isn't great. It's not bad, just not great. Neither queen seems to be liked much because both hives now have supersedure cells that are capped and I am back to round 2 or 3 of trying to get a queen made. I should have two new queens in the next few days which will help with winter preparations. Otherwise, I will need to combine my resource hives into these to bulk up for winter. So my self-imposed lesson to teach myself the queen lifecycle is progressing and I am learning a lot. We'll see what happens in the coming days.