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In the process of supersedure, the workers often show no mercy toward a no‐longer‐wanted queen. Bees kill a queen in the same way that they kill invading hornets, by biting her and forming a tight, heads‐in, walnut‐sized ball of bees around her (Figure 5.15). The bees then produce heat and direct it to their heads to “cook” the queen. Thus, even if one manages to “save” a queen being seriously balled, she rarely survives.

Practical application: There is great demand for “early mated” queens. But the weather does not necessarily cooperate, resulting in a percentage of early queens being poorly mated. And during shipping, temperature stress can cause loss of viability of the spermatozoa. Whatever the reason, many beekeepers report that newly‐introduced, or package bee queens, get superseded within the first month (this is not necessarily a problem).

Figure 5.13 Shaking bees through a sieve box to recover any queens. This is important when setting up a cell‐builder colony, as above, in order to mass‐produce emergency queens from selected mothers.

Figure 5.14 The thorax of a queen (center) or drone (lower right) is too broad to pass through a queen excluder.