Even without a queen, a honey bee can complete her normal adult lifespan of about four-to-six weeks. However, the colony she belongs to will not be able to survive more than a couple of months unless the queen is quickly replaced. Without a new queen, the colony will dwindle as the members die one-by-one.
Since only the queen can produce females, the colony cannot survive without her. The sterile worker females can lay eggs, but they can't mate with the male drones, and unfertilized eggs yield only males.
Bees who are queenless are often cranky and listless. They may make a high pitched whine when you open the hive. The population will also start to fall. First you will see less nurse bees, but eventually foragers will decrease in number as well.
Without a queen, the swarm will die, so if they lose their queen, the entire swarm will return and try again later, which can appear like many swarms instead of just one.
Either way, installing a queen will typically get your hive queenright again in less than a week. Allowing the bees to make their own queen can take much longer. It will take bees a minimum of 15 days to raise a new queen from brood and at least another 5 days for that queen to mate and start laying.
Finally, a queenless colony is usually more aggressive … or, perhaps more accurately, defensive. If the queenless colony does not rear a new queen it will fail.
In a queenless hive, workers may begin laying eggs in an attempt to replace her. Workers don't do the job nearly as well as the queen and will lay eggs randomly, often, more than one in a cell. If you see more than one egg in a cell or see an egg on pollen bread, you know your hive is queenless.
Most honey bee swarms are not aggressive but please do keep away and leave them alone. Honey bee swarming is natural and the bees are just looking for a new home. Bumblebees are best left alone. They are valuable pollinators, some are endangered.
You must destroy all developing queen cells present in the colony. By removing the queen, you create a break in the brood cycle which should weaken the colony enough to halt swarm preparations.
If you add a frame of eggs and young larvae they may well not raise queen cells. Therefore the usual test for queenlessness – queen cells generated from young larvae – gives misleading results. If you add a mated queen they are likely to kill her.
This avoids any delay and allows the queen to start laying eggs straight away. In theory, a colony that has been queenless for a while is desperate for a new queen, so they will accept anything. But there's always the possibility of rejection, so think carefully before you try this approach.
The hive must have a queen in order to grow and survive. Without the queen they will perish. The queen is the only bee in the hive that lays eggs producing the next generation of bees. She lays between 1,000-3,000 eggs per day...
Nurse bees will select 10 to 20 newly hatched female larvae and begin feeding them a strict diet of royal jelly, a milky white substance that be bees secrete from the tops of their heads. The exclusive diet of royal jelly turns on the female larva's reproductive system, turning her into a queen.
Orit Peleg, an assistant professor of computer science at Boulder, said that worker bees in a hive (the vast majority of bees) have to know where the queen is at all times because she is the sole source of eggs that keep the hive populated.
Her Appearance
The queen bee is larger, but more specifically, she is longer. Her lengthy abdomen extends out beyond the tip of her wings, giving her the appearance of having short wings. Her back, too, is different from that of most workers. She has a shiny, black hairless back, while workers tend to have fuzzy backs.
Older worker bees will reject queens that they are not familiar with and tend to view them as a colony invader, even when they have no hope of raising a new queen on their own. This is especially true if the queen is unmated, or not well-mated, with numerous drones from unrelated colonies.
Most beekeepers know that a hive only contains a single queen. However, this isn't necessarily always true. There are times when a colony may have two queens; and while it's usually short-lived, the scenario probably happens more often than most beekeepers realize.
It is a common beginner misconception that the queen will live for years and years, but in reality, most queens are replaced in under two years. In northern states, this replacement often happens right at the end of swarm season during the honey flow.
Typically, swarms only stay in one place for a few hours or maybe a day, but some swarms may remain for several days.
Making the hive attractive: Swarms are very useful for drawing out new comb but they are also more likely to stay if you provide them with drawn out foundation. Experienced beekeepers often use a blend of new foundation and drawn out comb. Feeding: Definitely feed them. Use a Light Sugar Syrup (1Kg sugar : 1L water).
Changing weather conditions from cool/rainy to warm/sunny seem to stimulate the natural urge of bees to swarm. Most swarms leave the colony in good weather between 10AM and 2PM, fly to a nearby tree or bush and land on a limb.
In the summer and rainy season, there is scarcity of flowers and bees are not able to forage upon the flowers. They have to sustain with the available food stores. This floral scarcity period is often called dearth period.
ADD CAGED QUEEN
Day 8: Immediately after destroying ALL the emergency cells, the colony is now hopelessly queenless. They have no queen and no resources (eggs or larvae) to create one. Add a mated queen, in a sealed queen cage and place between two frames of brood.