Question: Beekeepers often have a lot of money and time and effort involved in their bee hives. If a queen bee dies, what do they do about it?
Our visitors all figured out that the beekeeper would have to get another queen, but it didn't seem like anyone knew they bought them from suppliers! The bee world is an interesting place!
Rachael, from Elkmont, Alabama (whose favorite bug is a praying mantis) said, "They would have to get another queen because the queen is the one that has all the baby bees."
Melayna, from Chesapeake, Virginia (whose favorite bug is a ladybug) said, "The pricess becomes the queen." (our favorite!)
Breanna, from Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania (whose favorite bug is a butterfly) said, "They would haft to get another queen bee or they could just leave it alone and when the hive dies they could just [get] another hive!
Here's what BUGMAN an P.R. Mantis say:
Apiculture is the study of bees (sounds like it should be monkeys, but the Genus name for bees is Apis). So, a beekeeper is actually called an Apiculturist. Most people think beekeepers are the people who make honey for us. They do! (well, bees do, but the beekeepers get it to us.) But that is only a very small part of their jobs. As a matter of fact, if honey was the only way an Apiculturist could make money, they could never do it. It takes a lot of equipment and time to take care of European Honey Bees (Apis mellifera).
The way most beekeepers make their living is through pollination. Professional beekeepers actually load their white hive boxes full of bees onto pickup trucks and drive them to orchards and agricultural crop fields – for a fee (a bee fee!) This is an essential part of agriculture in the United States and around the world.
Since each bee nest only has one queen to lay all the eggs, she is pretty important. Of course, everything dies and it’s no different with queen bees. In the natural world, worker bees can feed a female larva a certain type of food (royal jelly) and make their nursery cell bigger than normal, and she will become a queen! It is amazing that a queen bee starts exactly the same as any normal bee, but then somehow the hive figures out to turn them into queens with special care! (That is very cool)
They usually make a few queens and let them fight it out. If the first one is healthy, she goes around and chews the tops off the other queens’ cells and then kills them. Sometimes there are even big queen fights to take control of the nest. The winner’s DNA is the material that gets directly passed on, so it’s a pretty big prize – and of course if you lose you die.
Even without the queen dieing unexpectedly a natural nest replaces her most seasons. When the nectar is flowing well in the Spring, the oldest workers and the youngest workers take off with the old queen and swarm. That is the time people see them bunched in huge groups on trees or building eaves. Many people are scared to death by this site (we think it’s way cool!), but this is actually a time when bees are about their most calm. They all get a stomach full of food before they leave and they are only protecting the queen – they don’t have a home.
Here’s a cool picture, but the service is in England – you don’t need it anyway!
While the swarm hangs out, scout workers survey the area looking for a new nesting site. A careful observer can even see the scouts ‘dancing’ on the outside of the swarm to tell the others any potential nesting sites. Others go to check it out and when a suitable place is found they all go there to set up their new home. So, most of the time, you can wait out a bee swarm – but be sure to get some cool photos first!
So, Nature of course has a way to re-queen a nest. The queen battle assures a strong queen (or a smart one, or a quick one, or whatever makes her the one who survives). Then the new queen goes out of the nest once (usually) to find large congregations of drones (males) mate a few times, and get home to lay eggs for the rest of her life.
The queen is obviously very important to a beekeeper – she’s the source of all the new bees and is critical in the control pathways for the nest. So, since agricultural Apiculture is a huge business, and all the apiculturists often need new queens, sounds like a business there, too. And it is. There is a small number of companies – mostly in California and even Ohio (and even Argentina!) – who grow and supply new queens for Apiculturists around the country.
If you look over any of those sites, it is obvious that tame, productive queens are the sales points. And it is a fairly competitive field. And the queens can’t be put in the hive directly, either. They come in little queen boxes which have screen on both sides and enough room for the queen to move around. The box has a plug of honeycomb in it and the bees chew the queen’s way out. Since it takes a few days to free her, the other bees get to acclimate to her particular pheromones or smells. If she is placed directly in the hive, the other bee will recognize her as being from another nest and throw her out or kill her. It is really amazing the things people have learned about bees.
Here's an interesting catalogue page from a California
Apiary - of course, BUGMAN and P.R. Mantis don't know anything about this
guys and we don't endorse them or anything... just came up in a search! And
there's an interesting FAQ section at the bottom.
http://members.aol.com/queenb95/catalog.html
Here’s a cute little “you know you’re a beekeeper when…” page!
Here’s some more beekeeping stuff, too
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Beekeeping/
The best part about honeybees is that if you are respectful and slow, you can take a real good look at them - in a swarm or at flowers. When they are working for nectar, they don't want to mess with us - don't breathe on them (they hate Carbon Dioxide) and move in slowly - you may even see them licking up the nectar! By the way, if you make them nervous and they fly up and make you nervous, just step back a couple of steps and let them get back to work. Then try again - with patience you won't believe how cool a working bee is!