Brood, Drones, Queens. You need to check the brood frames for good bee
production. A nice central pattern of brood and sealed brood means the
queen is active, laying, and has ample semen to produce worker bees. When
the queen is old, you won't see fresh eggs, larvae, or sealed brood. Then
the life of the hive is in trouble. You have to find the queen and replace
her with a new young, vigorous one. Many times a wearing out queen will
only lay drone eggs, or the workers will start to lay drone eggs (because they
are female, but aren't fertilized queens). A good queen secretes chemicals
that tell the workers she is in good shape to lay eggs and reassure the rest of
the hive. When these chemicals are gone, the workers try to produce a new
queen with royal jelly. But they need a fresh fertilized worker egg to do
that. If there aren't any, then the hive is lost. Beekeepers see
this and transfer a frame of sealed brood and a frame with eggs to the troubled
hive. The new workers emerge and are accepted in the hive, and one of the
eggs is transformed into a new queen. Usually it works, but timing is
everything.
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Mary Checks the Brood. |
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Important to know the queen is laying well, and making workers, not drones. |
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Frame with Drone Comb and Bee Bread. |
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Bee bread at far left of picture is the pollen the bees collect to feed their children. Drone comb is above that. |
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Pollen Sacs. |
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This worker has bright orange pollen sacs attached to her legs. She collects pollen as well as nectar. Pollen is protein, nectar mostly sugar. |
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Brood Frame. |
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The brown flat sealed crescent area is fully grown larvae changing into adult worker bees. What you like to see. |
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Brood Comb. |
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The whole comb is not filled. Usually a solid rim of sealed honey is around the sealed brood comb. |
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Larvae. |
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These nurse bees feed the larvae in various stages of maturity before the cells are sealed or capped. See into the cells. |
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Drone Comb. |
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The cells are bigger and stand higher from the comb. Only drones come from drone comb. So you don't want too much of it. Drones only mate and eat honey! |
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Drone. |
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Male bees are larger, fatter, and rounder than the female workers. They have big eyes to see the queen in flight. |
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Drone. |
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Drones have no stinger. They don't collect nectar or pollen. They have the easy life, until fall, when they are tossed out the door! |
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Identify the Queen. It is important to be able to identify and find the
queen. You need to know the hive has one. Sometimes you need to
replace an aging queen. Some beekeepers replace the queen every year,
usually in the spring to prevent problems in the hive. A normal queen
lasts about 3 years, but if the hive swarms, new queens are produced as the hive
splits and leaves to start a new colony. That is bad for honey production
and the strength of the remaining hive.
Queens are much larger than workers. They are the same color, but have
a large elongated abdomen...That is the lower part of the bee body. Here
is a blowup of a queen. Usually she is on the center brood frames, and has
a large number of attendants around her. Can you find her in the other
pictures?
