Читать книгу Honey Bee Medicine for the Veterinary Practitioner - Группа авторов - Страница 106

A queen may be unexpectedly lost without a supersedure cell in place. This may be due to sudden queen failure, disease, predation, mishap, or frequently in the case of inexperienced beekeepers, due to mishandling of the frames, resulting in injury to the queen (Figure 5.23). Or, a queen will occasionally drop off a frame to the ground, unnoticed, or sometimes even fly away (although she usually returns).

Practical application: a vet not highly practiced at handling frames of bees may wish to have the hive owner pull any frames for inspection, in order to avoid be blamed for killing the queen (Figure 5.23).

The colony does have a trick up its sleeve, however, to replace an unexpectedly lost queen: within hours it will begin making postconstructed “emergency queen cells.” All female larvae are totipotent (capable of developing into either caste) until they begin differentiating due to their dietary change beginning roughly 24 hours into their development.

Figure 5.23 The author has too many times observed a novice beekeeper inadvertently injuring a colony's queen, only to later see her body having been drug out the entrance. After any colony inspection, always check the ground and sides of the hive for small clusters of bees that may contain a queen.

Figure 5.24 Typical emergency queen cells at about a day after initiation, showing the process of floating worker larvae to the top of their horizontal cell on surplus jelly, and then adding additional wax to turn what is now a queen cell vertically downwards.

Practical application: Should a queen be unexpectedly lost, the workers have only a few days to save the colony – by converting at least one worker cell containing a female larva less than 24 hours old into an “emergency queen cell” (a “postconstructed” queen cell). This is done by floating chosen 1st‐instar larvae to the top of their cell on jelly, and then building a vertical queen cell downward (Figure 5.24).

Identification of emergency cells: The scattered appearance and multiple number of the above emergency cells, surrounded by cells of equal‐aged young larvae (not visible in this view) identifies them as emergency, rather than swarm or supersedure cells. These cells are only just started and will soon look similar to a supersedure or swarm cell. Before their emergence, however, the bees will cull some emergency cells, leaving only those with the best queens to emerge (Punnett and Winston 1983).

Practical application: The process of replacing a queen takes time. The first queens won't emerge until at least 12 days, then a virgin needs a few days to mature enough to take a mating flight (weather permitting), and then develop her ovaries prior to commencing egg laying (which typically commences 10–14 days after her emergence). Thus, it takes around 25–30 days after losing its queen before the colony will again exhibit a laying queen.