The Queen is Dead . . . Long Live the Queen!

Drama in the colony - the queen is dead . . .

I peeked into the hive late in the week and noticed a queen cup on one of the combs.  Bees normally build queen cups throughout the colony just in case they will need to raise a new queen.  The fact that they built this one so early in the life of the colony , however, had me worried.

A few days later, I did a more thorough inspection and my suspicions were unfortunately realized.  The queen and new eggs were nowhere to be seen.  This could mean one of two things:  she flew the coop with a swarm or she died.  A few signs point to the latter.

First, the bees built a queen cup to place an egg in.  This queen cup was a capped queen cell by the time I saw it the second time.  Second, there were about the same number of bees in the hive before and after the queen went missing.  Third, in addition to the queen cell, I saw several "emergency queen cells" made from what would have been horizontal cells where normal workers would be reared.  This suggests the queen suddenly went missing and the bees had to augment normal brood cells to accommodate a developing queen (this must be done within 4 hours of the queen dying).

The most common reason a queen dies, especially so quickly, is a clumsy beekeeper smooshing her when moving frames around.  I am fairly confident I did not do this since I am using a frameless hive, knew where she was, and have been supremely careful with my bees.  I suppose I could have done something else to harm her, but I prefer to think that something more dramatic occurred like an epic battle with a carpenter bee or that she valiantly fought off the carpenter ants as they tried to steal the young larva.

In any case, the queen cells mean I will hopefully have a new queen to replace the old one.  There is also a good amount of capped brood in the hive which means there will be some new bees to replace any that die in the next couple weeks.  While I was pretty bummed the day I found out I no longer had a queen, I am feeling a bit more optimistic now.