"Andy Hall" wrote in message
A swarm is a wonderful phenomenon and swarming must be seen as
reproduction
of the species. The old queen and about half the original colony fly off
to
find a new site and found a new colony. The rest of the bees and a
potential
queen (she will emerge from her cell the next day usually) stay in the
original hive and continue as though nothing has happened.

That's interesting. I would have expected the old queen to stay behind
and the new one to go off with her friends.

No, because of the answer to your next question.

Are there territorial battles over who gets to be queen?

Not exactly territorial. There's one queen per hive except in very special
circumstances. The queen is not a ruler at all, there's an historical reason
for the name. Shortly after the new queen is born she flies from the hive
and mates with several drones (male bees) who die, it is said, with a smile
on their faces. Their spermatozoa are stored in an organ in the queen's body
and don't race to find eggs as they do in mammals and other animals.

When the queen lays an egg in a cell in the comb she chooses whether or not
to release a sperm onto the egg. If the egg is thus fertilised it will
become a female bee. If it is not fertilised it will become a drone, a male
bee.

Then something miraculous can happen. The very same fertilised egg can
become a worker bee, with all sorts of organs which a queen doesn't and
without some she does. A different insect, in fact. Or that fertilised eggs
can turn into a queen, a larger insect without some of the organs the
workers have and with some they don't. The difference is accomplished simply
by feeding. Young worker bees exude a substance from glands in their heads
and it is fed exclusively to those eggs they decide to rear as queens -
very few. This substance is something you'll have heard of: 'royal jelly'.
It's not royal and it's not a jelly, it's a white thick liquid with a horrid
bitter, acidic flavour and is no use to Man or other animals no matter what
you're sold - sorry, told. It's sole purpose is to make that egg, which if
it were fed honey and pollen, into a queen bee.

Despite her large size the queen only spends nine days in her cell (workers
spend about fifteen days in theirs). The workers care for the 'queen cells'
assiduously, unless they (somehow) know that the contents are defective, in
which case they'll destroy the cell and contents.

A few days before the new queen (or queens) are due to emerge the old queen
stops laying, it's thought so that she'll be lighter and be able to fly -
remember that she's only flown once before in her life, on her mating
flight. She's heavier than the workers despite having more or less the same
length of wings. The day before the first new queen is about to emerge the
old queen flies off with, as I said, about half the workers. That's the
swarm.

A swarm in flight is a wonderful sight and sound, a great dark cloud,
seemingly without direction. If you have the privilege of seeing and hearing
one just stand and marvel at one of Nature's fantastic phenomena. There's no
need to be frightened, the bees have nothing to defend (brood) and they've
tanked up with honey in case they might not have another meal for some time
so it's physically difficult for them to get into a position to sting (they
have to curl their abdomen under, it's like touching your toes after
Christmas dinner). The swarm settles on a convenient branch or other site,
it's though when the queen gives up. 'Scouts' leave the cluster and search
for a suitable cavity, when they find one the message is transmitted to the
swarm which then flies off in more or less a straight line and quickly to
the new home.

Back at the ranch - hive - everything carries on as though nothing has
happened. Even though the queen isn't there there seems to be colony
cohesion because of the presence of the queen cells.

Next day the first virgin queen emerges. Then another, and another. They
spend some time walking around the comb but if one meets another there's a
fight to the death. The fittest one survives to fly off and mate and it all
starts over again.

Occasionally workers will rear another queen because the old one is failing.
In that case the young one can mate and lay with no problems in the hive,
even on the same comb. The old queen is likely to die in that situation by
the action of the workers. It's another mystery how they do it. It's called
'balling' the queen. A number of workers surround the queen, all round, like
a ball - about the size of a large marble. We know that she isn't stung to
death and it's unlikely that she suffocates but she dies. It's thought that
the temperature inside the ball might be raised so much that the queen can't
survive.

Sometimes the beekeeper wants to re-queen a colony, the best way is to
remove the old one and introduce a new one. If that's difficult there's
another way, to introduce a new queen and let her find the old one and kill
her, but it's not 100% successful. Sometimes the keeper wants to unite two
small colonies. A good way of doing that is to put the colony with the
younger queen over the one with the older one. You can't just mix colonies
of honeybees.

A modern hive is made up of four sides boxes which stand on a floorboard
with a roof over the lot. So any of the boxes can be put over any other. If
a sheet of newspaper is laid on top of one box and another box (with the
young queen) is put over that both colonies will chew through it - they
don't like foreign bodies in the hive. Gradually they mix and become one
colony. When the new queen meets the old one there's a fight to the death
and the younger one usually wins.


So you were on top of the house with a container?

Yes, it was an old house, belonging to an architect. We got a ladder, lifted
the capping stone off the chimney and lowered it with a rope to the floor.
Then we placed a skep over the chimney opening and left it until the
following evening. We went back up the ladder, lifted the skep which was
full of bees and wrapped a large piece of sacking over the mouth, fastened
round with an elastic luggage band. Carefully we carried the skep down,
replaced the stone and took the swarm home.

Easy! Fun!! Exciting!!!

:-)

Mary


Mary



Mary
--
geoff


.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl


.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl