The Young Pretender

After all the fun and games we've had this year with queenless colonies and trying to encourage our bees to raise new queens, imagine our surprise when we found a supersedure cell in one of our hives. This is a special cell containing the pupa of a new queen bee, and is different to when the bees make swarm cells. For one thing, it is usually found on the face of a frame rather than along the sides and bottom of the frame, and there is usually only one rather than lots.

Supersedure is when the colony makes the decision to replace its existing queen, and it raises a new one to take her place. The reason is usually because the bees have detected that the queen is getting too old, running out of viable eggs and/or sperm, or is weak in some way. Quite often scrub queens or emergency queens are replaced once they have done the job of getting the colony through whatever sticky situation they found themselves in. Some gratitude, eh?! The existing queen in this particular colony is quite small and so is probably an emergency queen. Little does she know that her work is almost done....

An existing old queen will quite often live alongside the new queen for a short while until she has mated and has started to lay.  As this supersedure cell is not yet sealed we have a few more days to wait until we meet the new queen, and it will be interesting to see what she's like. Watch this space!