A honey bee queen is a chosen one, they are chosen by the worker honey bees when the colony is in need of a new queen, the making of a queen is triggered usually by a combination of conditions such as congestion in the hive and lack of egg laying space. When the first virgin queen leaves her cell two things can now occur, either the first virgin queen leads a smaller swarm from the hive (called a cast) or she locates the other queen cells and kills the other virgin queen bee inside the queen cells by stinging through the wax wall of their cells. Just today I saw a queen cell opened up by some workers and the virgin queen's head emerge, I was happy to saw that scenery but I still had those fear of loosing the virgin queen bee, for the first 5 days of the virgin queen was critical, I lost some queen bee that emerge during the rainy days maybe because when they had their first flight the weather might not be good. A virgin queen as I describe it has a short abdomen and not engorged with sperm glands from male bees. Virgin queens appear to have little queen pheromone and often do not appear to be recognized as queens by the workers. A virgin queen in her first few hours after emergence can be placed into the entrance of any queenless hive or nuc and acceptance is usually very good. I am producing queens using the split type method, it is not easy to split a hive and there is no guarantee, for a new queen might not emerge, might not mate and of course the first mating flight was so critical. I am always hopeful that the first flight of the virgin queen bee will be successful because it is never guaranteed there is always that fear in me that she might not make it on her first flight or she might be killed. As of the splits that I have made in 4 Nuc boxes I already have 1 mated queen, 2 virgin queens and 1 queenless . October is fast approaching and I'm getting ready for their build-up period, dearth period was not an easy stage for the beekeeper and the bees but we are almost at the end of it for this year.
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Dilan's Apiary
Address: Kagudoy Road, Basak, Lapu-Lapu City Archives
June 2022
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