SC, thanks, I can read it. According to Brother Adam 50%, fifty percent of queens introduced into hives are replaced. I have to agree. Some of my queens are Cordovan so it is easy to see if a queen was replaced. Although I don?t see 50%, I have seen replacement of what I thought was a perfectly good Cordovan queen replaced by an Italian.
This can/will happen if the keeper does not check back within a week, for every week, for the next four weeks. What happens, my in my experience, is that the bees seem to start some queen cells immediately or had some on the go. Even with a new mated queen there in the cage. The new queen is accepted and starts laying. Her first priority is to get laying and get her smell emanating. She is not looking for rivals. If she comes across a cell she yes will destroy it, but she is not actively roaming the entire hive looking for them. She is busy laying. Any queen cells beyond the area she is working and laying will continue to develop. By contrast when the virgin emerges her first priority is to eliminate rivals, she is preprogrammed to seek and destroy. That new queen just laying for a week is promptly killed by the virgin.
The message and advice when introducing a new queen is to check at 5 to 7 days, repeat. It is the keeper who has to seek and destroy the queen cells. You may have to shake bees off all frames to find them all, as some can be small and really tucked in edges of combs. After 3 weeks, there should be no more and bees should not have started any more. It is clear and all safe and good from thereon.
This occurrence is not readily apparent in a nuc or a small hive as the pre-existing brood does not go beyond the area that the new queen is capable of working over within the timeline of a queen cell. However in a larger colony that may have 4+ frames of brood when the new queen was introduced, it is a near certainty that she will not get to the extent of those frames before a cell emerges and what I described will occur.
I lost 8 excellent new queens this season because of this until I realized what was happening. The saddest day was checking in on a new queen and finding her writhing in pain on the bottom board having just been stung by the virgin that was still clinging onto her. That queen was a great queen, had laid up 5 full frames in a week. She was fully accepted. It was just a remote cell, undetected, that released a virgin and well there you have it. Since changing from the -leave them alone for 2 weeks - to going to make direct assurance check and interventions at 5 day intervals, I have not lost one queen since.
Your experience may vary. I am now set rather firmly is this belief though after loss of investment in time, money, and hive setbacks from losing perfectly good premium queens; and not having lost any since adopting the practice of checking sooner. I cannot advocate the generally accepted practice of - leave them alone - , imho that results in more losses of good queens.
Topic: Supersedure Question (Read 2910 times)