This is very interesting . Girl Next Door Honey in San Diego, CA This is an intercaste queen. My photo turned out a little blurry but notice how this queen does not look like she should. Her legs, wings and upper body are all the correct size but her abdomen is stunted and triangular. How is an intercaste queen made? Well, all worker bee eggs start out the same. All are fed royal jelly to help them develop and any one of them has the potential to be turned into a queen bee. After 3 days however, the worker bee eggs that are not going to be turned into a queen are not longer fed royal jelly. Only queen bees are fed royal jell all through their larval stage. So if the bees need to make an emergency queen for some reason, if they dont have eggs younger than three days laid by their old queen sometimes they try to make a queen from the older larvae and that results in an intercaste queen. She did not develop fully because she did not get enough royal jelly. Usually she cannot mate and lay eggs properly and the hive will die out. This queen came from the birdhouse swarm I caught last week. Clearly, this hive had an emergency situation of some kind. They had to settle for an intercaste queen and abandon their home in winter. As a beekeeper if you want to save a colony with an intercaste queen, you have to kill her and give them a healthy queen. In this case I preserved this queens body for educational purposes and I will combine the rest of the bees with another colony that has a healthy queen.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 02:23:43 +0000
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