On Pursuit of Queens

The new queens arrived from B. Weaver Apiaries hand-delivered by the postman. It was time to get to work. I had split my strong hive in the backyard into two hives. Among these two splits, one had almost all of the brood and was much stronger. However I moved this stronger hive about 15 feet away and put the weak split into the old location. Most of the bees relocated to this weak split, greatly strengthening it. After the queens arrived, I inspected the comb in the deep super looking for eggs. I could not find any. This was an indication that the queen is in the other split. I was willing to gamble that this was the case, and I installed one of the new queens into this hive.

Now on to more difficult matters. The other original hive in my backyard needed to be requeened as well. This is the hive that I had kept down next to the creek, that was absolutely gangbusters last year, with a huge population and a lot of honey production. However I made the mistake of leaving the queen excluder in place over the winter. Probably for this reason, this hive was very weak coming into this year. About two weeks ago I had looked for the queen, just for kicks. I couldn’t find her. I did see young brood, but the population was low. Now after the arrival of the new queens, I popped the hive open again. It was good news and bad news. The good news was that the population of the hive was really taking off. Lots and lots of eggs and brood. The bad news is that the population was much bigger meaning it would be harder for me to find the queen.

The first try was unsuccessful. I figured that the queen was likely to be in the middle super. She would not be in the top super because of the queen excluder being in place. I didn’t figure her to be in the bottom (deep) super because I had not seen any brood in that super. I looked through each of the 10 frames very carefully. “Ok, looking for a bee. Big bee. Wandering around. Is that her? Is that her?” I noticed that there was a lot of heterogeneity in the size of my worker bees, with some having a much longer abdomen. I went through each of the frames twice. No luck. The bees were becoming excitable. I put everything away.

The next day I was determined to make it happen. I had looked at a few youtube videos on finding queen bees just to try and familiarize myself with what an unmarked queen might look like. Same story, looked at the middle super. Still not having any luck. “She will be obviously different,” I tell myself. After looking at each of the 20 sides of the frames twice, I decided to attempt more desperate measures. I set up a super and queen excluder to make a dump box. Basically, I would brush off all the bees on the comb into this box. The worker bees would go down through the excluder, but the queen would be trapped. A sifter. I did this, squinting down at the excluder trying to make out a plump bee unable to get through. A few drones, some workers, but no queen. After having done this, I had essentially almost ruled out the queen being in that super. Which meant that she had probably been in the deep super the entire time. The highly populated, highly excitable deep super. Time to pack it up and try again another time.

After talking to my father about my latest failure, he suggested I try and spritz them with sugar syrup. This might slow the bees down on the frames and prevent them from running all over the comb. So the next day was another attempt. I started the same as before, smoking the hive from the bottom, then removing the top super and placing it aside. As I was about to smoke the middle super, with a flash of either insight or memory, I decided not to. Maybe the smoke would drive the queen down into the deep. I didn’t want that. So I removed the middle super without smoking it. Then I spritzed the top with sugar syrup. I again started the laborious process of looking through the frames for the needle in the haystack. Each frame where the queen was not seen felt like another failure–the nagging thought being that she may be on the frame I had just examined, but I had been unable to see her. Her presence in the hive was very evident with eggs on almost every frame, and lots of them. On about the 6th frame, as I was rotating it, a flash of orange caught my eye on the side of the frame (not on the comb). I quickly turned the frame to look more closely. There was a large bee. A much larger abdomen, waddling quickly across the comb. The queen! It must be the queen, right? I moved away from the rest of the frames, as if adding a few feet would keep this bee in further isolation and prevent me from losing her. Should I kill her now, or watch? I decided to watch. First, I wanted to be sure it was the queen, and second, I wanted to observe her behavior. The bees had not completely filled this frame with comb, and in the open corner was a cluster of bees. She disappeared into this gap filled with bees. Uh-oh. Maybe I should have killed her–more anxious thoughts. But I knew she couldn’t go anywhere. After a bit she briefly reappeared, then disappeared into the corner again, as I flipped the comb over from one side to another. Like she was hiding. I had read that the queen often will run to the dark side of the comb (away from the sun, that I am using to view the comb). I tired of the chase. As soon as I had an opportunity, I would kill her. Finally she climbed on the long edge of the frame, and with hive tool in hand I squashed her abdomen. A viscous beige fluid emerged. I had read that some beekeepers report hearing a high-pitched noise at times when killing queens. I heard nothing. The queen was now stuck on my hive tool. I put the frame down and separated myself from the bees. Two or three bees were right with her, presumably instinct still in place to serve the queen. No time to reflect–time to get the new queen cage in place.

And so it was, everything put back together, with hopes that the bees will accept the new queen. A gentler queen I hope.

She was a bit of a mean queen, but she deserves a few thoughts. I inherited this colony from my father when he moved to Japan. It had been in his backyard. I placed it down by the creek in my backyard. In the midst of all the diseases and challenges that face bees (CCD, varroa mites, tracheal mites, small hive beetles, pesticides) this was a survivor hive. No pesticides, no chemicals. This queen carried valuable genes that allowed the hive to thrive. No doubt she spread her genetics far and wide through the drones and swarms she produced. I have considered the ethics of killing such a survivor queen. Reasonable people might make different choices. But in this case, the right path felt fairly straightforward: I would replace her with a queen from a breeder that also does not use chemicals to treat bees. Most likely she derived her genes from B. Weaver as well, given that this colony is from the same area.

So I have killed a queen for the first time. This is a very basic thing for a beekeeper. It’s one more thing that a beginner such as myself checks off the list. I was telling my father last night that I wished he was here to help me. But in some ways, it is better that I did it myself. Another lesson that humility and persistence are what lead to success. One more queen to kill and two more queens to place, and the task will be finished.