07/06/09 – Balling a Queen?
I checked on the hive today, and the new queen had been released from her cage. As I checked over the hive, and didn’t see the new queen, but did see evidence of another queen in the hive.
This ‘other’ queen was being subjected to a serious amount of attention, and I wanted to know if it was the new queen (noted by the green dot marking her as a 2009 queen) or a supercedure queen (which would have been created by the workers themselves).
When I shook the frame off, so some of the bees were removed, it was obvious that it was not the new queen I introduced, but another queen. So, the plot thickens…
This picture was taken after I shook the frame off, but some of the bees were quick to jump back on or near the queen.
The Center of Attention
There is a phenomenon with bees where the ‘ball’ the queen, creating a tight cluster around the queen and kill her by overheating or suffocating her. So, were my bees in the process of killing off this queen since my v.2.0 queen had been released?
Or were they balling her to protect her from being killed by Queen 2.0? I’ll tell ya what – I know what pi is to 8 decimal places, and can tell you the value of Avagadro’s Constant, but I’ll be darned if I know what the heck is going on with my bees right now!
See – here’s the problem: I’m guessing that my hive has been queenless for at about 2 weeks. It takes about 21 days from the egg being laid until the worker bee emerges from her cell. And, since the average life span of a bee during the summer is only about 4-6 weeks, we’re going to see a serious crash in the bee population at the White House Apiary.
Hopefully, the next time I open the hive, it’ll be loaded with eggs and larvae though – then I’ll pretend I knew what I was doing all along. If not, well, I guess there’s always next year!
