The queen bee serves as the sole layer of fertilized eggs within the colony, ensuring the survival and growth of the hive population. She is responsible for depositing up to 2,000 eggs daily during peak season, which provides the necessary workforce. The successful acquisition or production of a healthy, productive queen is fundamental to beekeeping management. A beekeeper must understand the various methods available to secure a new queen for starting a new colony, replacing a failing one, or expanding an operation.
Acquiring a Queen Commercially
Purchasing a queen is the most direct method for a beekeeper needing immediate replacement or starting a new hive. Queens are available from local breeders or national suppliers, offering a straightforward solution often preferred by beginners. Timing the purchase for spring or early summer aligns with the bees’ natural buildup period and improves acceptance chances. Buyers can select queens based on genetics, with common races like Italian (known for high honey production) or Carniolan (prized for good overwintering and calmness). A mated queen arrives in a small cage, accompanied by a few attendant worker bees for care during transit. The cage includes a candy plug, which serves as both a food source and a mechanism for delayed release. Upon arrival, the queen should be inspected for health and kept in a cool, quiet location until introduction.
Allowing Natural Replacement
A colony can naturally produce a new queen through two processes: supersedure or emergency cell creation. Supersedure occurs when the existing queen is aging, injured, or exhibits poor performance, and the colony decides to replace her without swarming. Supersedure cells are typically few in number, often one to three, and are usually built on the face of the comb. Emergency cells are created when the colony suddenly loses its queen, perhaps due to an accident or beekeeper error. Worker bees quickly modify existing worker brood cells containing young larvae, ideally less than 36 hours old, into queen cells. Queens raised from emergency cells may be of poorer quality compared to supersedure or commercially reared queens because the workers might use older larvae that received less of the specialized royal jelly diet early in their development.
Intentional Queen Rearing
Beekeepers can actively produce queens through technical methods like grafting, which offers control over the genetics and timing of the new queen’s emergence. Grafting involves the precise transfer of a very young larva from a high-quality donor colony into a specially designed queen cup. Ideal larvae are those that have just hatched from the egg, appearing as tiny, comma-shaped forms floating in royal jelly. This delicate transfer is usually performed using a specialized tool, such as a Chinese grafting tool, ensuring the larva remains undamaged. The prepared queen cups are placed onto a cell-builder colony. This cell-builder is a strong, queenless hive with abundant nurse bees ready to feed the larvae the copious amounts of royal jelly necessary for queen development. The process from grafting to the emergence of a virgin queen takes approximately 10 to 11 days.
Safe Introduction and Acceptance Protocol
Successfully placing a new queen into a hive requires a careful protocol to ensure the existing workers accept the unfamiliar individual. Confirm the hive is completely queenless and has no existing queen cells, as the bees will nearly always reject a new queen if they have their own in production. Allowing the colony to remain queenless for about 24 hours increases their desire to accept a replacement. The most common method of introduction uses the queen’s shipping cage, positioning it between two central brood frames where the bees are clustered. The candy plug end is exposed, allowing the workers to slowly chew through the candy over two to three days. This slow release process allows the workers to become accustomed to the new queen’s pheromones before she is physically free. Acceptance is indicated by calm behavior around the cage, whereas rejection is aggressive “balling,” where workers cluster tightly around the cage, attempting to harm the queen inside. Wait three to seven days before checking the hive again to confirm the queen has been released and has begun laying eggs, which is the ultimate sign of acceptance.