Ejected Queen Bee
To get away from work on my computer, I took a mug of coffee over to my garden hives to observe the bee movements. Whilst leaning on the back of the hive in which I introduced a new queen on Thursday, I could see they were bringing pollen in. Suddenly I saw a bee ejected from the hive and land on the ground. Closer inspection I saw it was a queen. Quickly running back to the house, I threw a smock on and gloves and grabbed the queen cage the new queen arrived in. Back at the hive I eventually found the ejected queen amonst the leaf litter. I got the queen cage over her and gently eased her in. Back in the kitchen I had a close look at her and could see she was on her last legs. She was struggling to stand and I noticed she was much smaller than a normal healthy queen.
I knew she was not the new queen introduced as she was not marked and the new queen was marked yellow on her thorax. I can only think, that though I did a thorough inspection of the hive before introducing the new queen, that the old queen though not laying eggs must have still been present. Unfortunately I have not had time since Thursday due to weather and other commitments to do an inspection on the new queen. Pollen is being brought in, so this is some indication she is laying, but I will only know when doing a full inspection.
I have the ejected queen in the queen cage, she has some fondant still remaining in the cage and I have put her in a dark warm place. I will have to see if she will recover, but I’m not hopeful. If she did fully recover, I could make up a nuc with her in place. But I will leave her until this evening and have another look at her.
I called my mentor Terry for some advice and he said ” I should buy a lottert ticket for tonight ” – The odds are very much the same in winning the lottery as the chances of looking at a hive and seeing a queen ejected.
So if you don’t see anymore on this blog in the future, I will be sunning myself on my yacht in the Med.
Bye Bye !!
your ejected queen is helpless on her own, she needs a few workers with her in the cage to feed her and groom her
Yes but I had no time to add any. I have just looked at her and she is dead, which does not surprise me as she looked very weak. Anyway if I hadn’t by chance seen her ejected, she would have soon died on the ground outside the hive. Unfortunate but I guess the perils of being a bee.
That really is an incredible story – no matter how long youy have been keeping bees, you still can experience something new! The queen that was ejected, even if she had survived, would never have been a working queen again anyway. She wasn’t laying before the new queen was introduced, so she must not have been very well mated. As a queen will only ever mate once, then her time was up anyway. As long as your new queen has been accepted and is laying ok – and it sounds like she is as the bees are busy bringing in pollen and nectar – then your colony should go from strength to strength.
Unfortunately the queen was dead this evening.
Yeah they probably left her for dead; either she had been sickly, or (more likely) the other queen stung her. Survival of the fittest and all that.
The swarms have started to appear left right and centre around here today!
I think sickly as she hadn’t laid any eggs for two weeks. Wet weather again and cold over weekend, so will leave hive alone til next week then see if new introduced queen is laying.
Lottery numbers didn’t come up. still here.
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