Great logical explanation thanks.
We joined two hives with newspaper between. We found it was brood I was looking at, there were lavae and there are a lot of drones. So I presume that indicates a laying worker, but also could be an emergency queen? Today there were a lot of bees being thrown out, say about two hundred max! I haven’t opened up to see if they have opened the newspaper and haven’t seen newspaper at the entrance yet. We have had some pretty strong cold winds (my flow hive lid blew off today.now strapped) . as the fronts have started to come up into NSW again, so have left hive alone.
More questions!
Does a laying worker change her shape, and how long does she live for.
“If you have a laying worker problem there will always be many more than just the one.
The bees will kill the laying queen you have introduced”
That throws a spanner in the works. With that gem of info and the possability of the queen excluder not working on a worker layer there may be some carnage. Already many drones have been chucked out.
Wait and see I guess!
So in this case there will be far more bees in the added box with a queen, than my chimney remnants box, which must give the added queen better odds of surviving?
Have many members have found the “DCA”, ie the area where the drones hang out waiting for a virgin queen ? see below.
And what about a queen piping? A regular occurence or a rarity.
The things I don’t know about bees!
Drone congregation area
Drone congregation area (DCA) is a place where drones fly most of the time after leaving the nest. The DCA is 30-200 m in diameter and 15-40 m above ground [1][2]. Drones fly back and forth in this area producing audible sound similar to a swarm of bees. Drones can choose among many DCA near the apiary. During its life a drone can visit few different DCA. Sometimes more than one DCA is visited by the same drone during one day [3].
The same place can be chosen by honey bees as DCA year after year [4][5], however, it is not known what makes the places attractive to drones. It was suggested that choice of the places is related to perception of Earth’s magnetic field [6][7] or visual features on the ground [8](observations of Buchmann reported in [9]). Usually there is an open space around DCA without trees or hils [10][1] see also [11]. Sometimes it is located over water or forest. Formation of DCA can be affected by pheromones produced by drones [12]. Artificial DCA can be induced with large amounts of queen substance [13]. In order to confirm presence of DCA, caged queen fixed to a balloon is placed in mid-air [14]. Presence of DCA is indicated by drones congregating around the caged queen. Instead of the queen its pheromones can be used [15][16]. DCA can be also observed using radar [9].
In order to reach DCA drones travel up to 7 km and cross mountain ridges 800-1000 m high [5][17]. Mean flight distance of drones is 900 m [18]. The drones prefer DCA located close to the nest [19][20].
Number of drones present at DCA depends on weather and time of day. It can range from few hundred to few thousand [21]. In region with high density of honey bee colonies DCA was visited during one hour by 11750±2145 (mean±SD) drones (maximum 15290) [22]. Drones at DCA are not related and represent about 240 colonies [23] see also [24][25]. The same DCA can be visited by different subspecies [5][26].
The concentration of drones is highest in the centre of DCA [27]. The diameter of DCA at higher distance from the ground is smaller and its centre is not always in the same place at different heights [27][28]. Drones fly to the DCA along tree rows and other features of landscape at maximum hight above ground 21 m [29]. Neighbouring DCA are often connected by flyways.
Queen is attractive to drones only within DCA. If queen is few meters outside the DCA (both in horizontal and vertical direction) drones stop pursuing her [1]. Distance above the ground where queen is attractive to drones differed between days and it is probably affected by weather [14]. It was suggested that drones visiting DCA release a pheromone which is attractive to queens [30].
Drones collected at DCA can be used to monitor the surrounding population. This can be useful in honey bee conservation areas [31] and for monitoring population density [32].
I’ve never seen a DCA here where I live but I remember seeing and hearing them as a child when I didn’t appreciate what they were. Interestingly a virgin queen will fly to a distant DCA whereas drones from her hive will not. Thereby increasing her offsprings gene pool. Apiary vicinity matings however do occur in periods of prolonged bad weather.
To get back to laying workers:
If you have laying workers to re-queen the usual way is to add sequential brood frames till the brood pheromones stop the laying activity then add a mated queen or unite the colony to a queen right one. A quicker way is to smoke them well then shake them out in front of other hives. The bees will beg a home elsewhere and the egg police will eat their eggs till they stop laying. This works with a drone layer you can’t find because she will not be allowed a home in another colony.
If you try to unite two colonies each with a laying queen the queen in the top box is more likely to survive but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Talking of fighting queens, a virgin is much more agile than a fat egg laying queen and will usually be the loser.
I saw one on a movie last night - “More Than Honey”. The documentary made me sad when I saw the commercial beekeepers’ handling of bees, and it even made my husband see @Michael_Bush’s point of view about medicating.
One of the best parts of the film was a short segment of a mating flight of a queen. It looked like a miniature swarm. The queen took flight, and drew a cloud of drones about 10 feet or more across - fabulous to see. They even had footage of a drone falling after mating - sad, but I guess he was ecstatic… This is the trailer. We watched the movie on Netflix.
Thanks the two D’s.
Another question I can’t find the answer to is how many deaths per day in a hive. Time of year is going to be a significant factor, but logically if a queen can lay 2000 eggs per day it will need to be up to that peak for the hive to survive if all is going well?
I am a little perplexed as to why the workers have the ability to lay drones in terms of an evolutionary option. I can only think that if the queen dies and there are no eggs to feed royal jelly to create a queen, then the next best thing for the genes to continue is to produce drones?
Part of the fascination for me about bees is that it feels like a truly symbiotic relationship we have. We are not totally in control, in fact far from it, and they will carry on without us. Part of the fear of being a new bee keeper is thinking that you are responsible for all the 40,000 lives of those bees, hence the desire to know if the sugar ratio should be 1:1 or 2:1 instead of
Rusty Burlew just addressed exactly that question in your first sentence in a nice article here:
Hives can survive perfectly well with the queen laying only 1,000 eggs per day, or with her laying up to 3,000 per day. The hive will just reach a “steady-state” at a different time and population level in each case.
You are probably right, but I think of it in a different way. Workers and queens both have the same genes. The only thing that makes them different is what they were fed as larvae. The workers ovary development is suppressed by pheromones from brood and the queen. In the absence of suppression, their ovaries develop and they have the urge to lay eggs. As they have never mated, they can only lay drones (only fertilized eggs become workers).
My husband works in cancer research. One thing that used to drive him nuts was people loosely using the term “cancer genes”, as if these genes were designed or evolved to cause cancer. Of course that isn’t true - we weren’t build with a self-destruct like that. Closer to the truth is that the genes have a role when they are active for example in embryonic development - they make cells multiply and move into the right positions. In later life, they are switched off, or at least turned down a lot. When a cancer develops, the brakes get taken off these genes once again, and now they cause problems by making lots of extra cells in the wrong places, and allowing them to move when they shouldn’t. Basically, the suppression has been taken away, so the normal mechanism runs riot. I think it is the same issue with laying workers - take away the normal controls, and things don’t work right any more, even to the eventual detriment of the colony.
I understand and respect that - you are trying to do the right thing. Many people believe that 1:1 sugar syrup in Spring better simulates early nectar flow (which often has more dilute sugar) and thus stimulates brood and wax production better. So if you have a new hive, or need to feed in Spring, 1:1 may be a better choice. The 2:1 syrup is more likely to be stored and capped, so it is better used in Autumn/Fall if the hive seems short on supplies. Hope that gives you a more useful answer.
Thanks for those great answers. My point about the ratios of sugar was that a new beekeeper like myself gets obsessed by a “definite” recipe for feeding which may not make a great deal of difference to the welfare of the hive, without realising the potential damage being done by opening the hive too much on the grounds of good husbandry.
Very wet this weekend. No one even venturing on to the platform for a few days.
