Demeter has a laying queen!

According to bee math on June 20th, if the superseder cells I spotted then did just hatch I would have a queen right about now.  I just looked and YES I do have eggs and some larvae!  The hive seemed like it's content self again.

Queenless and bee math

Friday I went into all six hives that I have at my house.

• The CSX split is fine, but not building comb and building up as well as I would like.  I will continue to feed them and try to get them where they need to be for winter.
• Both packages that I started this year are doing fine, but I will continue to to keep feeding them as well.
• The combined split is doing well and should be able to over winter without any further help
• Demeter is queenless!  I did find two superseder cells with capped worker brood around them.  Bee math tells me that if indeed this was a superseder by the hive the queen had just hatched since the queen takes 4 days less to hatch then worker brood which was still surrounding the queen cells.  It takes about 2 weeks for the queen to orient to the hive, do her mating flight and start to lay.  I will check again in two weeks to see if a queen is laying.  

This bottom queen cell looks like it was distroyed by the first emerging queen.

Sometimes I just don't know

Today I went and had a look at the CSX hive.  If the bee math is correct I took the original queen with me when I made the split.  I saw new eggs but no larvae at all.  This make me almost sure that I mistakenly took her highness with me.  Not ideal, but as long as the eggs I saw weren't from a laying worker (a couple of the cells had multiple eggs in it, out of a whole frame maybe 6 cells) it should work it's way out. If you double click the bottom picture you can see 2 of the cells with 2 eggs in it just to the right of the lower bee.  The egg position suggest a queen, they are in the center, standing upright.

Signs of a laying worker:

• Brood Pattern:Laying workers lay eggs that lack the queen's egg recognition pheromone, meaning that other workers may remove the eggs. This results in a spotty brood pattern, in which empty cells are scattered heavily through capped brood.
• Number of Eggs per Cell: The beekeeper looks at the honeycomb cells to see how many eggs are laid in each one. Queen bees will usually lay only a single egg to a cell, but laying workers will lay multiple eggs per cell. Multiple eggs per cell are not an absolute sign of a laying worker because when a newly mated queen begins laying, she may lay more than one egg per cell.
• Egg Position:Egg position in the cell is a good indicator of a laying worker. A Queen bee's abdomen is noticeably longer than a worker, allowing a queen to lay an egg at the bottom of the cell. A Queen bee will usually lay an egg centered in the cell. Workers cannot reach the bottom of normal depth cells, and will lay eggs on the sides of the cell or off center.
• Drone Brood in Worker Cells: Another good indicator is drone brood in worker sized cells. Drones are raised in larger cells than workers. Drone cells are recognizable by their larger size, and when capped Drone cells are capped with blunt pointed cappings. Drones in worker cells are a sure sign of a failing queen or laying worker.

Double click on picture to see eggs.

Michael Bush's bee math

I might have already posted this before, but since I didn't label from the beginning I couldn't find it.

Bee Math

All of the numbers about the life cycle of bees may seem irrelevant, so let's put them in a chart here and talk about what they are useful for.

Caste   Hatch    Cap          Emerge 
Queen   3½ days  8 days +-1   16 days +-1  Laying        28 days +-5
Worker  3½ days  9 days +-1   20 days +-1  Foraging      42 days +-7
Drone   3½ days 10 days +-1   24 days +-1  Flying to DCA 38 days +-5

If you find eggs, and no queen how long ago do you KNOW there was a queen? At least there was one three days ago and possibly is one now. If you find just hatched larvae and open brood but no eggs when was there a queen? Four days.
If you put an excluder between two boxes and come back in four days and find eggs in one and not the other, what do you know? That the queen is in the one with eggs.
If you find a capped queen cell, how long before it should have emerged for sure? 9 days, but probably eight.
If you find a capped queen cell, how long before you should see eggs from that queen? 20 days.
If you killed or lost a queen, how long before you'll have a laying queen again? 24 days because the bees will start from a just hatched larvae.
If you start from larvae and graft, how long before you need to transfer the larvae to a mating nuc? 10 days. (day 14)
If you confine the queen to get the larvae how long before you graft? Four days because some won't have hatched at the beginning for day 3.
If you confined the queen to get the larvae how long before we have a laying queen? 28 days.
If a queen is killed and the bees raise a new one how much brood will be left in the hive just before the new queen starts to lay? None. It will take 24 or 25 days for the new queen (raised from a four day old) to be laying and in 21 days all the workers will have emerged and in 24 days all the drones will have emerged.
If the queens starts laying today how long before that brood will be foraging for honey? 42 days.
You can see how knowing how long things take helps you predict where things are going or where things have been.
Sometimes you just have to figure best and worst case. For instance, an uncapped queen cell with a larvae in it is between four and eight days old (from the egg). A capped queen cell is between eight and sixteen days old. By looking at the tip of the cell you can tell one that is just capped (soft and white) from one that is about to emerge (brown and papery and often cleaned down to the cocoon by the workers). A soft white queen cell is between eight and twelve days old. A papery one is between thirteen and sixteen days old. The queen will emerge at sixteen (fifteen if it's hot out). She'll be laying by twenty eight days usually.
Michael Bush