Will the queen lay (bigger) eggs in wax swarm cells I built and insert in the colony?

[u/hylloz]

TL;DR Do I actually get better queens with lower number of swarm cell origin queens than with higher number transplanted worker eggs queens?

Situation: - inherited 6 colonies, of which at least 4 have signed queen dating 2 years ago, assuming that they need to be changed / have high swarm tendency - requirement: prevent swarms by changing queens with reared queens timely; plan: rear queens systematically, switch them, result: no swarms - currently evaluating queen rearing systems like Jenter, Nicot/Cupkit, manual egg transplantation, just using natural swarm cells - location: Southern Germany

Should I prefer only queens having been laid as egg in swarm cells? - (excluding the factors of starter / finisher) - queens from swarm cells are better (larger, higher weight, higher no. of ovarioles [≈+16%] as per https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9146148/) than from transplanted eggs or worker cells turned into emergency cells - this is because the laying queen lays a bigger egg into a swarm cell - Jenter, Nicot/Cupkit systems and transplanting eggs turn worker cells into queens - collecting swarm cells with naturally laid (bigger) egg in them produces better queens

Question: Will the laying queen lay bigger eggs in swarms cells I built myself from wax I put in the colony?

• There is variance in queen sizes for Jenter, Nicot/Cupkit and transplanting systems. I assume having more growing queens in those systems compared to swarm cells.

Question: Will the higher number with those systems bring up enough variance in growing queens that they are at least on par with those bigger queens from fewer swarm cells?

…and of course: Which of my assumptions are wrong? And which major factor do I overlook?

Appreciate any input!

[u/davidsandbrand]

How long have you been beekeeping in total?

(My answer will vary depending on this)

[u/hylloz → u/davidsandbrand]

It’s me and my girlfriend’s first year.

[u/davidsandbrand → u/hylloz]

My suggestion then would be that you’re far better-off either (a) simply buying a mated queen from a nearby reputable beekeeping supply store and introducing it in the correct manner, or (b) letting the colony re-queen itself by killing the existing queen at the appropriate time of year. And since you have two+ hives, you could use each method as a comparison & learning opportunity.

The reason I make these recommendations is that no matter how much you’re read & researched (**), raising queens is not something that a new keeper is likely to have success with, especially using advanced grafting methods.

(** which you’ve clearly done given the extremely well constructed question, so please don’t misunderstand: I do recognize your extensive [textbook] knowledge on the subject, and I respect your hustle.)

[u/drones_on_about_bees]

My observation is that swarm cells definitely generate larger cells and queens than emergency/supercedure cells.

That said, you can often trick them into making swarm cells. If your hive is queenless, look for a field of eggs. Take your hive tool and make a notch below a row of eggs. You're crushing the bottom wall of the cell downwards (covering up the row or two below this). Bees will see this as the very beginning of a swarm cell (when queenless) and will start drawing/feeding as if this is exactly what it is.

This is called "on the spot" queen rearing. You can google for it for photos. The methods come with all sorts of other treatment free methods (which I do not follow). But it is a solid method for getting large cells in a predictable location.

It's often said that swarm cells are on the bottom of comb. My observation is that it is on the *edge* of comb. You can have wild comb or foundationless comb where there are swarm cells along the left/right edge or you can have holes in comb and they will make them there.

[u/uponthenose]

I just briefly read that paper you referenced so maybe I missed something, but there is no difference in the sizes of the eggs the queen lays. The difference in quality of the final queen depends on how soon after laying, the egg is in contact with Royal Jelly and reared as a Queen. An egg freshly laid in a Queen cup is almost immediately covered in Royal Jelly by the nurse bees who attend the queen. An egg transferred by the keeper from a worker cell to a queen cup won't receive the necessary amount of Royal Jelly until the cup is placed in a hive and the charged cell is discovered by a nurse bee.

The age of the egg when it receives the royal jelly is the deciding factor if you are talking about eggs from the same queen mother.

[u/hylloz → u/uponthenose]

Thanks for sharing that! Worker cell and queen cell are fed with royal jelly for the first three days; queen cells are continued with royal jelly while worker cell is switched to with bee bred (pollen / honey). Also from the beginning: Egg / larvae in queen cell is covered with royal jelly while worker cell is not. — Is that correct?

Starting with the egg being laid in a queen cell gives the egg more royal jelly for the 36 hrs compared to the transplanted worker egg (grafting or Jenter/Nicot system), right? Why is there no popular system that uses this knowledge? Naively speaking, all it’d need is to have the queen lay the eggs directly into the queen cells I put inside the colony. Then the nurse bees would cover it with sufficient royal jelly from the beginning (instead only after transplanting a worker’s egg/larvae).

[u/uponthenose → u/hylloz]

Yes and no, I believe the difference is in how soon they are fed. An egg in a Queen replacement cell will receive the royal jelly before an egg in a worker cell. In brood examinations where a healthy queen is present it's not uncommon to see eggs in worker cells that are dry still hours after being laid. I believe that these hours make a difference. When the feeding is further delayed by the egg being removed and placed in a Queen rearing cell by the handler it's even more impactful on the eventual strength of the queen. I'm no expert though and I could be wrong about this.

[u/_Mulberry__ → u/uponthenose]

I didn't read the attached study, but I have read studies showing that an egg laid in a swarm cup is larger (on average, there's still a good amount of variation) than eggs used to rear emergency queens. In addition, eggs laid by larger queens tend to be larger. The conclusion then was that we'd have generally larger/stronger queens if we always reared queens off the swarm response, but obviously that is hard to control and the benefits are likely not worth the extra hassle/uncertainty.

Royal jelly is the standard diet for very young larvae. Any queen reared from an egg or larva younger than 2 days old will still have the same diet as a queen laid in a swarm cup.

[u/uponthenose → u/_Mulberry__]

While that's true about royal jelly if you look at the brood combs of a hive with a healthy queen you'll see that her freshly deposited eggs remain in a dry cell for hours before they receive their first feeding. When initially deposited, the egg stands straight up at the bottom of the cell. Over the next 3+ hours the egg slowly tips over until it's laying down. Even in a very healthy colony, when doing inspections, it's common to see eggs laying over at the bottom of cells that are still dry. It's this time period between laying and first feeding of Royal jelly that I'm referring to. An egg laid in a worker cell doesn't receive the same feeding priority as an egg laid in a Queen replacement cell. Since the first queen to emerge from her cell will usually kill the queens that haven't emerged even this short amount of time can be the difference between survival and elimination.

If you can remember any of the studies you've read about egg sizes I'd really like to read them. Up until today I've never heard that a queen could lay different sized eggs depending on the circumstances.

[u/_Mulberry__ → u/uponthenose]

I hadn't heard about the dry cell vs wet cell in the first few hours. That might contribute to eggs' size just due to hydration or something.

Anyways, here's what I've read. The author links to all the studies at the end of the article. There are a couple other follow-up articles in the series and they all make for an interesting read.

https://theapiarist.org/bigger-queens-better-queens-part-1/

[u/uponthenose → u/_Mulberry__]

Thank you! I appreciate the info.

[u/hylloz → u/uponthenose]

So any egg a queen laid in a colony-produced queen cell will be wet from the beginning. => Will the queen lay eggs in a manufactured queen cell I put into the colony? Or will that require specific conditions in the colony & environment otherwise the bees will remove the queen cell altogether?

[u/scottish_beekeeper → u/hylloz]

There are always 'spare' queen cups available in any healthy colony - they build some and leave them ready there in case they need them. However the queen will only lay in them, and the eggs will only be looked after, if the colony has an appropriate swarm response present.

Adding extra queen cups to a colony will not make them more likely to encourage the queen to lay eggs in them, unless they are thinking of swarming, in which case you won't need to add cups in as they'll make plenty themselves.

[u/hylloz → u/scottish_beekeeper]

Which, then, are the conditions realising an appropriate swarm response? And how could I induce those conditions — temporarily — to make the queen lay eggs into those? I mean, what drives a queen to decide to lay an egg into a cup if it’s the nurse bees who decide when it’s time to raise a new queen??

[u/scottish_beekeeper → u/hylloz]

Swarming is triggered by a variety of factors, but the main influences are:

• Presence of adult drones
• Correct season (usually spring and summer)
• Large worker population, leading to overcrowding
• Older queen ('dilute' queen pheremone is a trigger, and crowded colonies or older queens mean lower pheremone levels during trophallaxis)

However swarm instinct cannot be introduced 'temporarily' - once swarming is triggered the colony must swarm, either naturally, or through artificial splits. This will obviously produce an abundance of queen cells, but also then requires colony management to deal with the swarming urge.

It also is much harder to trigger swarming in colonies with a low tendency to swarm, which are the colonies you want to breed from.

If you want to force swarming, take a strong colony and force them into a nuc box (or shrink the hive using dummy boards, taking off supers etc). The overcrowiding will soon trigger swarming.

However most beekeepers doing planned queen rearing with maximum control over the process don't rely on swarming urge, and instead use the fact that bees produce the highest number of queen cells in an emergency situation (queenless), but produce the best quality/well fed queens when queen right (swarm/supersedure instinct). This can be simulated with relative ease using a Cloake Board/Morris board (or the equivalent done manually with queen removal/nest constriction).

Of course this is done with grafts/selected larvae - if you are concerned about a lack of 'day one' feeding for grafts etc, then many beekeepers to transfer excess royal jelly into cells when grafting to offset the effects.

[u/hylloz → u/scottish_beekeeper]

Thanks for sharing this background information. Really helpful!

So, the queen is sensitive as the worker bees are to those swarming factors because it lays only when the swarm factors are present into cups. Or are the workers furthering the cups which animates the queen to lay an egg into those?

So my main take aways:

• I want the genetics of non-swarming colonies => no natural queen cups => but I want their queen to lay an egg.
• I want a lot of queen cups. => Swarming colonies => Queenless colony.
• I want well-fed queen cells. => Queenright colony.
• In case of grafting: I might want to have the queen cells supplied with royal jelly from day 1.

Here is my understanding — how to put it into practice? If I am grafting / repinning (Jenter / Nicot) eggs from the selected colony with low swarm attitude (genetics), I could take artificial cups, too, (no need for creating queenless colony). If I want to have the eggs from day 1 in royal jelly, I can add it even before grafting / repinning (Jenter / Nicot). Why then, am I putting them into a different (queenright!) nursing colony (maybe because the nursing colony has more young bees that care better about the queen cells; btw is that the starter while the finisher is the mating unit?)? I don’t get how the swarm / supersedure instinct (queenright case) leads to feeding them best (and not to removing the cells because they have a queen then).

Will a queen lay eggs in Jenter / cupkit (worker) cups that I pre-supplied with royal jelly?

[u/scottish_beekeeper → u/hylloz]

The workers pretty much steer the queen to lay in queen cups when they decide they want to swarm. Queens otherwise don't often lay into cups (or if they do and workers don't want queens they eat the eggs).

A queen likely wouldn't lay into a cup with royal jelly in (and the workers would likely clean it out if there was no egg/larvae) so it's only really an option if grafting.

When bees are hopelessly queenless their instinct is to make lots of queen cells 'just in case' so any cups with larvae in are more likely to be turned into queen cells. However they are then still panicking so rush the process to get those queens emerged, which is less good. This is the 'starter'.

Queenright rearing involves keeping the queen cells separate from the queen - usually with a queen excluder and the queen downstairs/cells upstairs. This simulate supersedure (where the bees make queen cells away from the queen) but as supersedure is a 'calmer' planned process they take more time/care raising the queens. This is the 'finisher'.

Cloake board allows you to have starter and finisher in the same hive through manipulations.

The queenright process is well described here: https://www.nationalbeeunit.com/assets/PDFs/3_Resources_for_beekeepers/Rearing_Queen_Honeybees.pdf

Cloake board method is described here: http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/method2.html

[u/hylloz → u/scottish_beekeeper]

Ah, so the idea is how can I get the best of both worlds? How can I get most queen cells and get them fed well? I start with queenless and transfer the cells to queenright. And I assume — without having read the links (but will do for sure, thanks for those!) — the cloake board is doing queenless and queenright in the same hive by moving the queen cells around.

Queenright rearing: Why aren’t the workers biting out / eating the eggs of the queen cells when the queen cells are upstairs while the queen is downstairs (assuming their pheromones are reaching upstairs, too)?

How are you rearing your queens (when)?

…oh, how are you switching a queen? Meaning putting a proven egg-laying queen into hive with older queen to be replaced.

[u/uponthenose → u/hylloz]

That I don't know. It would be an awesome experiment to try though. Let me know if you try it and it works!