A honeybee colony’s survival depends entirely on its queen, who lays all the eggs and produces pheromones that regulate the entire social structure of the hive. The queen’s chemical signals, particularly Queen Mandibular Pheromone, suppress the reproductive development of worker bees and promote colony cohesion. When a queen is suddenly lost, the absence of these regulatory pheromones immediately triggers an emergency response. This loss places the hive on a countdown, making swift recognition and intervention necessary for its survival.
Identifying a Queenless Hive
The first sign of queen loss is often a noticeable change in the colony’s temperament, as the bees may become agitated, restless, or aggressive due to the lack of calming pheromones. A more definitive indicator is the absence of young brood, specifically fresh eggs or very small larvae, because the queen is no longer laying. Since eggs hatch into larvae after three days, a lack of eggs but the presence of larvae suggests the queen has been gone for less than 72 hours.
Worker bees will also begin constructing emergency queen cells, sometimes called “panic cells,” which are built over existing young worker larvae or eggs. These cells are typically irregular, built on the face of the comb rather than along the bottom edges, which distinguishes them from typical swarm or supersedure cells. While observing the queen directly is the only way to be completely certain, these behavioral and structural clues provide a strong indication of queenlessness.
The Short-Term Biological Timeline
When a colony loses its queen, the worker population begins to shrink immediately. Worker bees have a limited lifespan, living about six weeks during the active summer season. Since no new eggs are being laid, the population declines rapidly as older bees die off without replacement. The colony generally survives for about three to four weeks before population attrition becomes critical and the hive loses its ability to perform necessary tasks.
The ability of the colony to raise a replacement queen depends on the age of the remaining brood. Worker bees can only rear a new queen from a female larva that is three days old or younger. This means the window for successful self-requeening closes approximately three days after the queen is lost. If the colony fails to raise a new queen, the population continues to dwindle, leading to the next stage of decline.
The Emergence of Laying Workers
The critical failure point for a queenless hive occurs with the emergence of laying workers, due to the prolonged absence of queen and brood pheromones. After approximately three to four weeks of queenlessness, the ovaries of some worker bees develop because the chemical suppression is gone. These workers are not mated and can only lay unfertilized eggs, which develop into male drones.
Signs of laying workers are distinct. An experienced eye will notice multiple eggs in a single cell, eggs laid haphazardly on the sides of the cell walls, or eggs placed on top of pollen. The resulting brood pattern is characterized by scattered patches of drone brood, often in the smaller worker-sized cells, which have bullet-shaped cappings. A hive with established laying workers is difficult to save because the workers often reject and kill a newly introduced queen, mistaking her for a rival.
Options for Colony Rescue
Intervention is most successful when the colony is newly queenless and has not yet developed laying workers. If a hive is diagnosed as queenless within the first two weeks, a beekeeper can introduce a new, mated queen in a protective cage. Alternatively, a frame containing fresh eggs and young larvae can be transferred from a healthy hive, giving the queenless colony a chance to raise an emergency queen.
If the hive has been queenless for an extended period and laying workers are established, the path to rescue is more drastic. The presence of laying workers usually causes the rejection of any new queen. The most common method involves shaking all the bees out of the hive, at least 50 to 100 yards away from the original location. The laying workers, being less prone to flying, are left behind, while the non-laying workers return to the stand, where they can then be combined with a strong, queen-right colony using the newspaper method.