Queen Cells - an explanation.

[little john]

Confusion has recently been expressed in a thread here regarding what type of queen cells were being observed - hopefully this explanation will help beginners distinguish between them.

There are only TWO kinds of queen cell: those which are built from the brood comb, and those which are built onto the brood comb.

Those which are built onto the brood comb are Swarm Cells, and in order to build these, bees choose the most convenient attachment points - hence the cells are attached along the edges of the comb, at it's sides or more usually along the lower edge.  If there are holes or similar imperfections within the comb, then cells may be attached to the upper edges of these.  Although a large number of swarm cells are usually drawn, it is their method of attachment which is the key to distinguishing these from non-swarm cells.


The other types of queen cell are built from worker cells within the brood comb itself, and vary only in the circumstances under which they are drawn - but it is that difference in circumstance which determines the appearance and the number of cells which are typically drawn.

When a queen starts to fail, bees sense this and begin to deal with the situation. But - this doesn't represent a crisis, and so the bees leisurely select (typically) one to four larvae of the right age to elevate to queen status.  Because larvae of almost identical age are invariably chosen, these cells will tend to look the same, as they are drawn at more-or-less identical rates, and be capped within hours of each other.  These are supersedure cells.

In contrast, when a colony detects the sudden and unexpected loss of their queen, they will panic - for this is indeed a crisis - and will begin to draw 'emergency' queen cells from whatever material is available to them, providing it appears viable.  And so, unlike the swarm cells which are always started with eggs, and supersedure cells which are always drawn from larvae - emergency cells can get started with whatever the bees can lay their hands on - eggs or larvae, they don't care.  And because this is a crisis situation, they will start lots of them in order to 'cover all the bases'.  And it is precisely because of this variation in starting material that emergency cells are usually found - again, formed from the comb - in large numbers, and unlike supersedure cells, will usually be seen in various stages of development.
 
Hopefully this will help to clarify the confusion which often leads to beginners repeatedly cutting out supersedure cells in the misguided belief that they are swarm cells, and insodoing eventually killing the colony.

LJ

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Little John:  well written, as usual I might add.  Do you know, or anybody know: can a nurse bee transfer an egg?  I realize the eggs are glued for lack of better words to the cell bottom.  Can a nurse bee overcome this attachment and maintain the integrity of the egg and move it?

Can or perhaps better stated will a nurse bee transfer larva?  I am thinking in relation to queen cells, a crisis mode in which bees are panicking.  Not certain of any other reason a bee would move an egg.
Blessings

[GSF]

Van, it's my "guess" that they can. They put honey and pollen in the bottom of cells and in the case of a laying worker hive they have to pull all but one egg out of the cell.

[little john]

A good question - and it raises in my mind yet another question: do queens actually lay in Swarm Cell Queen-Cups ?  Many will say that they do (MB is one) - but consider ...

Queens measure the size of cells before laying in them.  A worker cell gets a fertilised egg, and the larger drone cell an unfertilised egg.  But Swarm Cell Queen-Cups are at least as big as a drone cell, if not bigger - so how is it that she lays a fertilised egg in them ? Or just maybe she doesn't lay in them at all ... ?
Yet another mystery to solve 
LJ

[Michael Bush]

>Many will say that they do (MB is one)

Reaumur observed the queen laying in queen cells as did Huber's collaborators and others.  I have no reason to doubt them.  Maybe whether or not an egg gets fertilized has more to do with what the workers do than what the queen does.  Perhaps there is sperm on all eggs, but the workers activate it when it's in a worker cell.  No one has ever really proven how the queen would decide or how she can lay a worker (fertilized) egg and turn right around and lay a drone (unfertilized) egg.  You think she can actually let one sperm at a time through?  That seems doubtful.

[eltalia]

For mine... without "waxing lyrical" it is the workers who determine what gets laid where and by whom. There exists some evidence of that tenet to be seen where a loose collective of workers begin laying, queen present or not.
More evidence is found in bees herding a queen beyond the brood chamber proper to then herd her back - after laying - and proceeding  to build drone and queen cells at the new location.
Having seen queens allowed to roam seemingly unattended  over brood comb and yet at other times closely "guarded" I am pushed to concur it is physical manipulation by workers, either in feeding or 'massaging', which
issues fertile and infertile outcomes.


Cheers.

Bill

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

The queen cannot control a single spermozoa as correctly stated by Mr. Bush.  A queen can control the spermatheca (sperm holding chamber.). A queen can open or close the spermatheca which is directly connected to the oviduct thereby allowing fertilization.  When a single sperm permeates the egg membrane, an immediate change in the intergerity of the cell membrane occurs.  The cell wall of the egg now prohibits permeability by spermozoa.  This change in the membrane happens in a millisecond and I have witnessed this many times with the aid of permeable membrane dyes and a Zeiss microscope in a controlled laboratory environment.

So only a single spermozoa can enter an egg.  The queen does not realease a single sperm at a time, this would be impossible, agreed.  She releases many to produce workers or closes the spermatheca to produce drones.  What about "contaminated" oviduct when the queen is producing drones, they would become workers I suspect.  Not sure about that.

[Michael Bush]

My question would be, what clears the oviduct of every last sperm cell when she switches from workers to drones?  It seems doubtful that this is possible.  It takes an active sperm cell to penetrate a zygote and perhaps the workers control that so they can prevent fertilization of drone eggs.  This theory has been around a long time, but in recent times has been ignored.  I still don't see a theory that explains all of the known facts.

[gww]

Just a point of interest.  I saw a post by Michael palmer just today where he said basically just for grins, He put three laying queens and some nurse bees in a cage together and the queens basically ignored each other.
Cheers
gww

[BeeMaster2]

Here is a little bit of info on this to read.
Queen Bees Control Sex of Young After All
Nov. 15, 2007 , 12:00 AM
Royalty has its privileges, even in the insect world. Queen honey bees can choose the sex of their offspring, a new study shows. Like a sharp stinger, that finding pokes a hole in the notion that queens are merely mindless egg layers and that worker bees have the final say on whether the queen lays eggs that give rise to males or females.

Every young queen goes on a mating flight and then stores the sperm she collects from multiple matings for the rest of her life, using it up bit by bit as she lays eggs. Males, called drones, emerge from unfertilized eggs, and females emerge from fertilized ones and become the workers. So if the queen adds sperm to an egg, it will produce a female; if she withholds sperm, the egg will produce a male. That would appear to give the queen control over the sex of her offspring. However, the dogma among entomologists is that workers control the type of eggs the queen lays. The workers build the cavities, known as cells, in which the queen will lay her eggs. A queen will lay an unfertilized egg in a particular cell only if the cell is big enough to accommodate a male larva, which is bigger than a female one. So by controlling how many cells they build of each size, the workers can limit how many male offspring the queen produces.

Despite these constraints, the queen can still tip the gender balance of the hive, report Katie Wharton and a team of entomologists at Michigan State University in East Lansing. To prove it, they confined queens inside their hives in specially built cages. Each cage was placed so that the queen could not reach the large cells where she could lay drone eggs but only the small cells where she could lay worker eggs. After 4 days, the cage was removed and the queen allowed to roam free in the hive, which had ample empty cells of both sizes. The queen then sought out the larger cells and, on average, laid nearly three times as many drone eggs as usual, apparently making up for the skewed hive gender ratio that resulted from her incarceration, the researchers report in the November/December issue of Behavioural Ecology. "The workers and the queen clearly share control of honey bee demographics," Wharton says. "It was like discovering a checks-and-balances government inside the hive."

The queen's ability to make "her own decisions" adds a new layer of complexity to life in the hive and raises questions about what stimuli the queen is responding to, says Lars Chittka, an entomologist at Queen Mary University in London. "Is she remembering how many eggs she has laid, can she sense how much sperm she has used, or is there some sort of chemosensory cue telling her how many drone larvae are in the cells?" Chittka says. "Following this new research, it's anybody's guess."

[eltalia]

"Here is a little bit of info on this to read.
Queen Bees Control Sex of Young After All
Nov. 15, 2007 , 12:00 AM"

Such works by "learned persons" should form part of any considerations
in  "how stuff works", and replicated easily as an accepted element of the organism studied. It is how we arrived at such science as Penicilin (sp?).
Yet I reckon it would not be difficult to punch holes in the findings of that
study, and I am yet to discover any peer review given the publication is dated 2007. One would have thought many a publication since would have used that information aa reliance in arguing other factors of egg deployment?
Begs a closer look.. in my assessment.

Cheers.

Bill

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Cheers Mr. Bill:  the article referenced is "Science News" which is completely different from the scientific journal "Science."  Science is one of the most respected journals in the world and one of the hardest to publish an article in.  Every sentence must be written so a single word cannot be misinterpreted or misunderstood. If three spaces separate a sentence instead of the standard two spaces a reviewer would red line and send the article back to the original author who would further face scrutiny from peers. Error is not accepted in these scientific journals.  Science News is a different world.

I have published papers in science journals relating to human disease.  What a pain.  Each paper takes about six months to obtain acceptance.  A minimum of 3 senior scientists, specialist in the particular field will scrutinize each word.  Then onto the journal and again scrutinized by their scientist.

[eltalia]

"the article referenced is "Science News" which is completely different from the scientific journal "Science.""
(edit)

Not so familiar with either Van I do empathise with the magnitude of the task of
achieving publication.. onerous at any level, for my skillset :-)

Do I have your advice accurately read in you are saying "Science News" is the equivalent of "Modern Mechanics" [1] when valuing any content published as science?
I found a couple of interesting reads in searching for reviews of the article
but none of them topical for this thread.

Cheerio.

Bill

--
[1] http://www.popularmechanics.com/

[little john]

Science is one of the most respected journals in the world and one of the hardest to publish an article in. 

Fully agree - and yet back in April when I posted: "Interesting article in Nature this week about the relationship of varroa and Deformed Wing Virus (DWV). https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45953 ", it was viewed as being 'assumptions masquerading as science' (my words).

There is a real problem when top journals such as Nature are being viewed alongside journals and magazines which come perilously close to being comics, and articles within them are seen as having equal merit.
LJ

[Acebird]

I still don't see a theory that explains all of the known facts.

I can dream up theories all day long.  Just don't know how close to the truth they might be.
How about the workers eat or clear the eggs until the sex they want ends up in the cell they want.  How many misfires would you expect between the switching process?

[Roger Patterson]

Little John,
My experience is different than yours.
Swarm cells are built from cell cups the queen lays in. There can be any number from about 6 upwards, usually 8-20, often staggered by 6-7 days, but can be much less. I had some this year that were all built within about 2 days of each other.
Supersedure cells are also built on cups, where the queen has laid eggs in, not taken from larvae. There are usually 1 often 2 and occasionally 3. I can't remember seeing more than 3. You are correct, they are usually similar age. They are usually close together, often on the same frame.
Individually swarm and supersedure cells look identical, but it is the number and their condition that tells me what they are. Swarm and supersedure cells can be built anywhere on the comb. I have often seen swarm cells in the middle of the comb and supersedure cells on the edge. A week ago I saw one on the bottom edge of a comb. I have seen many on the frame and others on combs of food where there is no brood.
In my experience it is unreliable to state that swarm cells are found round the edge of the comb, supersedure cells on the face.
Emergency cells can be built from the midrib or the edge of the comb.
Roger Patterson.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Do I have your advice accurately read in you are saying "Science News" is the equivalent of "Modern Mechanics" [1] when valuing any content published as science?

Yes, Now that is a good understanding, Mr. Bill.  ?? Not relegated to bees though, did an asteroid made of pure gold really hit Australia?  PURE GOLD???  Keep it short, please.  Adm. OK by me to delete this non bee related question.

The journal SCIENCE is written with a lot of Latin making reading difficult for me.  NATURE as mentioned by LJ is also considered top and most difficult to publish in.

I have read the article mentioned by LJ.  An island off Brazil with bees isolated for decades.  What a perfect place for an experiment with Bees, varroa and bee wing virus.  Chemical free, no treatments I might add.
Blessings

[eltalia]

"Not relegated to bees though, did an asteroid made of pure gold really hit Australia? PURE GOLD??? "

heh..heh, diddun land in my backyard... I can tell ya..!!

"I have read the article mentioned by LJ. An island off Brazil with bees isolated for decades. What a perfect place for an experiment with Bees, varroa and bee wing virus"

There is a similiar story behind Kangaroo Island bees;
http://www.users.on.net/~hogbay/hogbay2.htm

Call me cynical but with the very high human population movements post WWII I join with others highly sceptical of such claims of "pure-eet-tee".
After all we in Aussie believed we were onto a good thing - and helping you guys out - in exporting our 'disease free bee packs' right up until someone
said "who put the beetle in the pack [1]".
I trust some authority from here in Aussie gave up a "oooops... sorry about that!".

Cheerio...


Bill

--
[1] http://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/2627349/disease-free-bees-make-global-impact/
http://www.queenslandcountrylife.com.au/story/4419117/bees-research-targets-small-hive-beetle/

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8T9lq2kWssE
1981 - In September the news of the day was the "Kangaroo meat scandal" Marius penned the lyrics "The Colonel put the lickin' in the chicken, but who put the Roo in the stew?" Recorded in Brisbane's Sunshine Studio, the song was released with RCA Sydney. Due to it's topical nature, everything about the song was done quickly to coincide with the beef scandal. It was written, recorded and released as a single within ten days - claimed by RCA to be the fastest released and fastest selling record they had ever handled in Australia.