By: Phil Craft
This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2016 issue of BEEKeeping Your First Three Years
How to recognize a queenless hive
Q: From a Tennessee beekeeper: I recently heard you speak in Kentucky and you talked about the problem beekeepers can have with queenless hives. How can I know that my hive is truly queenless, or inversely, be sure that it has a queen?
A: A colony that has lost its queen and failed to produce a new one faces decline, and ultimately ceases to exist. Ascertaining that a hive has a viable, laying queen is as important as making sure that it has enough food, and that diseases and parasites are controlled. It takes 21 days for a new worker bee to develop from an egg. That means that three weeks after a colony goes queenless, its population starts to dwindle as old bees die and are not replaced. Too often, novice beekeepers do not detect the absence of a queen until the colony is beyond recovery.
Part of my regular hive checks, which I do about every ten days to two weeks in the Spring and early Summer, is looking for the queen or evidence that one is present. The easiest way to do this is by examining a few frames near the center of the brood area. The queen herself may be elusive, but since eggs hatch within forty-eight hours of being laid, their presence attests to her recent activity. However, recognizing eggs is a skill which can take time to master. If you don’t see them, look for large, white, “C” shaped larvae which are easy to spot. Once you locate them, look for the smallest larvae that you can see, which will be on the same frame or on one nearby. These larvae are two to four days old, which means the queen was laying five to six days earlier. Though seeing eggs is better, I find a six day time frame is acceptable as long as you are doing regular hive checks.
If you fail to see eggs or young larvae, the search must continue on all brood frames (meaning all frames under queen excluders.) Quickly glance at those filled with honey, nectar and pollen and concentrate on frames with empty cells. As you proceed, watch for the queen herself; it helps if you bought one that was marked. Sometimes a queen is present, but not laying, as during dearths when no nectar is being brought into the hive, or shortly after swarming when the new queen has yet to mature and mate. As much as two weeks may elapse from the time a new queen emerges until she makes her mating flights and begins to lay. Add to that the time she spent in larval development after her cell was capped and before she emerged, and the colony can experience a three week gap in egg laying. That is why, when I think a hive has swarmed and I fail to see eggs or young larvae, I wait as long as three weeks (about the time that all the capped brood has emerged) before concluding that the hive is queenless. Once I have done so, it is time to install a new queen or merge the hive with one that is queen right. 
How to recognize a colony that has swarmed and what to do and watch for
Q: From an Indiana beekeeper: Last year I had two swarms from my four hives. I had seen numerous queen cells there shortly before the swarms appeared, so I am pretty sure that one of the swarms was from that hive. However, I never was sure which of the other hives swarmed. In the future when I have swarms, how can I tell which hive they came from?
A: Of course, the surest way to identify the source of a swarm is to see it emerge from the hive. This does sometimes happen, at least for me. I work from home, my hives are near my house, and during swarm season I make at least a couple of visits a day to my bee yard. However, not everyone is in this situation. A sudden reduction in a hive’s population can be an indication, but that is difficult to gauge in a strong colony.
The other way to tell is from evidence INSIDE your hives. In Spring and early Summer you should be checking them at least every ten to fourteen days. Numerous queen cells are an indication that a colony is preparing to replace a queen about to depart with a swarm. Swarm cells can be distinguished from supersedure cells (which colonies make to replace an old, injured, or infertile queen) by their number. Supersedure cells are produced five or six at a time; swarm cells by the dozen. During inspections, pay special attention to the bottoms of the center frames where queen cells are most likely to be found. You can often see them, without pulling frames, simply by tilting the brood boxes back until part of the bottom is visible. If you see a number of capped queen cells, there is a good chance that a swarm has already emerged, which they typically do soon after closing the cells. Cells like the one at the one end picture (often which with a have flap been attached), closed and indicate then that opened at one end (often with a flap attached), indicate that an adult queen has emerged by eating her way out.
It’s important to identify hives which have swarmed because they are at a vulnerable stage and require attentive monitoring. With the old queen gone, the continued existence of the colony depends on producing a viable replacement. Sometimes the process breaks down. The virgin queen may be prevented by bad weather from making mating flights during her window of fertility or she may be injured or killed in route. The resulting queenless hive can only be saved by the beekeeper’s alert intervention. For more on how to from a recognize this situation, see the question in this issue from a beekeeper in Tennessee.
