A Russian Queen is Born!

Our new Russian Queen!

June 3, 2014

When I received and hived this package of bees in April, the original queen seemed fine though short in length. However, she looked healthy, plump and walking vigorously on the frame. After few mainly rainy, cold and damp days the queen who would not lay one tiny egg for the life of her...started miserably to lay a handful of eggs. That was good but...

I could see that she was not really enthuse about her job! (who would? Laying up to 2,000 eggs per day!) I gave her few days to take charge, but still it was not very impressive. I suspect the honey bee workers felt the same, and concluded that their queen was rather wimpy.
They had to act fast,  only few eggs had been laid and the bees had to raise a queen from one that was less than 4 days old!Then they make the elongated queen cup, and feed the larva lots of royal jelly.

After about 14-16 days the new virgin queen emerged, found the old queen and killed her. Then her next mission was to fly to the Drone Congregation Area (DCA) where she will mate with 15-20 drones (male bees not from her own colony). It is a place where drones fly most of the time after leaving the nest. The DCA is 30-200 m in diameter and 15-40 m above ground . Drones fly back and forth in this area producing audible sound similar to a swarm of bees. Drones can choose among many DCA near their  apiary. During its life a drone can visit few different DCA. Sometimes more than one DCA is visited by the same drone during one day.

The  newly mated queen, after her dangerous travel to the DCA (she can be eaten in flight by a bird or  hit by a car...) came back to her hive where she will never leave again. In some instance , the queen will have to go back to the DCA, if the weather was poor, or low drone count.  But generally one trip is sufficient as she gathers about 6 million sperm which will be store in a "pouch" in the abdomen call: spermatheca. 

Now what I saw today, (a few eggs and a beautiful mated queen) is all that work behind the scene that many  ignore but to me it is fabulous! How wonderful is that!

Time to let her be!   ;)