Death of a Colony

When a colony dies, it’s important to investigate the cause so that, perhaps, you can improve in your stewardship the following year. This is a photograph of a colony that lost their queen. What you see are a number of emergency queen cells. There were more on the other side of the comb. Emergency queen cells are different than swarm cells. Swarm cells are found along the bottom and edges of the comb, often preceded by queen cups, which the bees have been diligently preparing for the potential queen larvae. They invite the old queen to lay eggs in these cups, and start a daughter queen and hopefully a new colony.

Emergency queen cells are built directly on the face of the comb when the bees suddenly loose their queen and don’t have queen cups prepared.

An egg can only be turned into a queen in the first three days of gestation, before it hatches. That means the bees have three days to raise a new queen, and if they miss the window, there’s no hope for the colony.

Why did this colony loose its mother? She was killed by yellow jackets wasps.
In a bad wasp year like this one, yellow jackets will attack a colony, biting off the heads of bees, eating larvae, killing the queen, and eating honey. The bottom of the hive was littered with the bodies of bees with their heads bitten off. I’ve never seen it so bad. This was a strong colony, but the yellow jackets were stronger.

What makes it a bad wasp year? A preceding mild winter and lots of dry conditions. A mild winter means some wasp queens survive and start raising their young early. With a wet, lush spring and summer, they have lots of other food sources, but if it’s 90 degrees in early May and dry AF all summer, the wasp population skyrockets. Furthermore, bee colonies hit their peak population in midsummer, they start to diminish in size, whereas yellow jackets hit their peak numbers in late summer and fall. This equation can spell doom for the bees.

This colony had a strong brood pattern and lots of honey, but the excessive heat and months of wildfire smoke weakened them to the point of vulnerability, and once the wasps took out the queen, that was it.

#bees #queenbee #yellowjackets