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“Queen failure” is a nebulous and poorly‐defined term, nowadays given in surveys as a choice for the cause of colony mortality. As such, it is often listed as the most common cause of colony loss by beekeepers (BIP 2019). This is somewhat surprising, since “back in the day,” colonies tended to quietly and efficiently replace their queens via supersedure without any help from the beekeeper, and when I review older beekeeping textbooks, the term “queen failure” isn't mentioned.

Figure 5.15 This aged queen (note the well‐polished thorax) became a “drone layer.” This photo shows her workers aggressively attempting to “ball” her to kill her.

Practical application: Infection by Nosema apis used to be strongly associated with early queen supersedure (Farrar 1947), but this does not appear to be the case with N. ceranae, which has largely supplanted its cousin. Thus, treatment with fumagillin against nosema may no longer be necessary to protect queens.

Since the arrival of varroa, the stress from greater virus exposure, as well as miticide residues in the combs may be having adverse effects upon queen survival. Similarly, residues of some agricultural insecticides may affect queen longevity.

Practical application: The question may be, why aren't colonies simply superseding failing queens, which would prevent a “colony loss.” I wonder whether what we are now seeing is more “unsuccessful supersedure” rather than “queen failure.” Some possible suspects would be genetics, pesticide residues, miticide residues, or something to do with varroa and its associated viruses.