Queen Bee Importance and Dealing with Multiple Queens in a Beehive

The Importance of Queen Bees in Beekeeping

In beekeeping, the queen bee is the most important member of the hive. She is responsible for laying all the eggs that become the bees that make up the colony. As such, ensuring the hive has a healthy and productive queen is essential for the beekeeper.

What is a Queen Bee?

The queen bee is a female bee that is larger and has a longer abdomen than the worker bees. She develops from a normal fertilized egg but is fed special food called royal jelly by worker bees during development. This extra nutrition triggers her development into a fertile queen.

Unlike worker bees that only live around 6 weeks, a mated queen bee can live up to 5 years, allowing her to reign over the colony for multiple seasons. During peak season, she can lay up to 2,500 eggs per day to sustain and grow the hive population.

The Queen Excluder Cage

When beekeepers introduce a new queen bee to an existing hive, they use a special cage called a queen excluder cage. This small box has an opening allowing worker bees to pass food into the cage but prevents the queen from escaping.

By keeping her confined, it allows the colony time to become accustomed to her pheromones. After a few days, the beekeeper returns to release her into the hive. By that time, the rest of the colony usually accepts her as their new mother queen.

Reasons a Hive Might Raise Multiple Queens

Occasionally, unusual situations occur where a bee colony raises more than one queen at a time. While having more than one queen is not sustainable long term, there are a few reasons this might temporarily happen.

The Hive is Preparing to Swarm

Most commonly, rearing multiple queens is related to a hive’s reproduction by swarming. As the current queen ages or the population outgrows the nest cavities, the colony may create several queen cells to raise replacement queens.

When the first virgin queen emerges, the old queen leaves the nest with about half the worker bees to establish a new colony elsewhere. The remaining bees may allow several virgin queens to emerge to determine the fittest before eliminating the rest.

The Queen has Died or is Failing

If disaster strikes and the reigning queen abruptly dies from disease or injury, the colony must act quickly to replace her to survive. Worker bees will select several young larvae to feed royal jelly to create emergency queen cells.

Likewise, if the aging queen begins failing in her duties and isn’t keeping the hive sufficiently supplied with new bees, the colony may start multiple queens to hedge their bets against complete reproductive failure.

Beekeeper Driven Splitting or Requeening

Sometimes, finding multiple queens is the result of a beekeeper deliberately manipulating the hive. Strategies like splitting strong hives or regularly requeening to genetially improve stock can temporarily result in two or more queens coexisting.

Once settled into their new nests or culled down to a single queen, stability returns. But while competing queens remain, you may deal with additional aggressive and swarming behaviors.

Dealing with Multiple Queen Issues

Whenever multiple virgin queens are present, beekeepers generally want to eliminate down to just one mated queen as soon as possible. But choosing how to intervene depends on why the surplus queens are there in the first place.

Avoid Early Separation During Swarm Conditions

If the drive to swarm is high, aggressively splitting the hive too soon rarely stops the leaving impulse. Better to let the process play out, allow one queen to take over the old nest, then catch and hive the swarm cells.

Installing swarm catch boxes also allows you to retrieve these bonus colonies to expand your apiary. Take advantage rather than fight the natural reproductive urge.

Isolate Queen Cells When Requeening

When requeening for improvement by adding purchased queens, you want total control over the queen source. Set up a split or nuc box and carefully transfer every queen cell you find into that unit so they emerge away from your prime colony.

Going forward, keep records of which colony originated from the new queen’s progeny to better assess traits like honey productivity and gentleness.

Cull Excess Queens in Emergencies

During emergency queen events like post swarm capture or requeening deadouts, focus on keeping only one replacement queen. Destroy all other queen cells as soon as they are identified to avoid the waste of resources and fighting.

If an older virgin queen has already destroyed her rivals and is returning from mating flights, her strong survival instincts make her an excellent candidate for heading up the rebuilding effort.

Having more than one queen bee in a hive is always temporary. But leveraging these events to swarm prevention, divide colonies, or upgrade colony genetics can deliver useful opportunities for beekeepers in tune with the natural cycles of their hives.

FAQs

Why do bees raise multiple queens?

Bees raise multiple queens most often as part of preparations to swarm and establish a new colony. It can also happen if the reigning queen fails or dies unexpectedly, forcing the hive to quickly raise emergency replacements.

What is a queen excluder cage?

A queen excluder cage is a special small box used when introducing a new queen to a hive. It has openings for workers to feed her but prevents the queen from escaping while the colony adjusts to her presence.

How do you stop bees from swarming?

To discourage swarming, provide adequate space, eliminate queen cells regularly, split strong colonies, and try techniques like clipping one of the queen's wings so she cannot fly off with a swarm.

What causes a hive to become aggressive?

Hives typically become more aggressive when defending multiple virgin queens. Reducing down to one mated queen and providing adequate space for the colony helps calm defensive behaviors.

Why requeen a honey bee colony?

Beekeepers may requeen colonies to introduce desired genetic traits like resistance to diseases, improve honey production, or simply to replace an aging, failing queen with a more vigorous one.