Marked, Mated 2025 Queens are $35 (Includes PA sales tax). Please email at beekeeping@beamsbees.com if interested in a mated queen. Queens are available for pick up only usually sometime in the month of June, once our nuc orders are all filled. Please read the information below before contacting us if you are not certain you need a mated queen.
“Help! I can’t find my queen. I think I need a new one...”
But do you really? We can’t tell you how many of those frantic calls we get each year and we can’t tell you how many people we talk out of getting a new one – often to have them call us back later to thank us. They often think we’re crazy for not wanting to sell them a new queen right away, and are wondering why we’re going through “20 questions” before agreeing to sell them one. The reason is often because they actually have a queen, but just don’t realize it. And, if they buy a new queen, their bees will just kill her, and they’ll have just wasted money and a mated queen that someone else likely does need.
So, how do you determine whether or not you actually do need a new queen? Well, like so many things in beekeeping, it’s not an easy, guaranteed, one-size-fits-all process to determine. But here are some steps and tips that we here at Beam’s Bees regularly employ.
b. As you are inspecting, look and listen for the following:
i. Your old queen (if she was previously marked, she may not be any more as those marks wear off and the nurse bees sometimes clean them off)
ii. A new queen – If you haven’t inspected your hive in the past 16 days, you could have a new queen in there somewhere. If it’s a virgin queen, she will be smaller, faster, more “nervous” and generally harder to find than your old, mated queen, but she may be (likely is) a viable solution to your problem, and at the very least, is emitting pheromones that would likely cause them not to accept a queen you try to introduce as long as she’s there.
iii. Queen cells – These are the peanut-like cells that hang down. You may find them anywhere on the frame (depending on the circumstances as to why they’re making a new queen) and can be hard to spot if they are just starting to make them, only have one or a few, hid them somewhere, or you have a lot of bees covering them (so you might have to carefully move some bees to properly inspect). Be careful when moving and flipping frames around as you have to be gentle with closed cells as the developing queen can be easily injured. You may have developing cells (i.e.: open-ended, elongated cells “charged” with royal jelly and an egg/larva – ignore queen cups that are not charged as they are a regular occurrence), capped/closed cells that look like a peanut shell, or open (used) cells.
1. If you have developing or closed swarm cells (typically along the bottom edges of frames, but not always), a lot of bees, and eggs in cells, you may still have an old queen that hasn’t swarmed yet, and you may be able to find her and make a split.
2. If you have open (used) cells, try to analyze to determine if the cells were opened at the bottom (neatly had the tip cut open – sometimes it is just hinged and will flip back shut) or ripped open from the side. Opened at the bottom indicates a queen emerged from there. Ripped open from the side usually indicates that either that queen was killed in the cell by her sister who emerged first or was a dud and was torn open by the workers. However, if you haven’t inspected your hive in awhile, the workers may even be in various stages of tearing down old cells that a queen emerged from.
iv. Eggs / Larvae / Capped Brood – If you have any of these in your hive, you can use that to help determine when you at least “last” had a laying queen. For worker brood, if you see eggs, you had a laying queen in the past 3 days; open/developing larvae, within the past 8 days; and capped brood, within the past 21 days.
v. Numbers of Bees – Do the numbers of bees seem reduced from what you last saw/expected? If so, they may have swarmed and you need to try to determine when (by using some of the above clues and your notes from your last inspection) to see if you should wait longer to see if you may have a virgin that hasn’t yet started laying.
vi. Demeanor / Sound – Often bees that are “hopelessly queenless” will seem more “buzzy” and agitated. But not always! Sometimes they sound like that when the virgin is out on her mating flight.
vii. Honey / Food Storage – Often bees that are “hopelessly queenless” will more randomly store food and totally fill areas that were previously reserved for brood. But not always! Sometimes during a heavy nectar flow they will quickly dump food into cells and quickly return to the source for more. The first open cell they see, they may put the food in there.
viii. Signs of Laying Workers – This is a bad situation and a real mess to say the least as this usually means they have been “hopelessly queenless” for awhile, but yet if you try to introduce a queen without resolving, they will often kill her as the laying workers are now emitting pheromones. Signs of laying workers include: multiple eggs in cells, eggs on the sides of cells, spotty patterns, eggs/larvae not being tended and reared, capped brood will all be drones, and seemingly desperate attempts to try to make random queen cells containing eggs and drone brood. Often, the eggs of laying workers are larger, too.
2. Other things to look for and consider:
a. Is there any room for the queen to lay eggs? – Sometimes, especially during a strong nectar flow and after a period of queen inactivity (e.g.: while they were replacing a queen), the workers will fill everything up with food, leaving the queen with almost/no place to lay eggs, making them “honey-bound”. That doesn’t mean that you don’t necessarily have a queen, but just that she has nowhere to lay. Try introducing some empty, drawn comb (if you have it, or foundation if you don’t) into a central brood area location and then re-check after a couple days to see if you have eggs.
b. Are you in the midst of a dearth? – In our region, the nectar flow is often very short (e.g.: late-April to early-June) and then there often isn’t much nectar coming in after that. Often, the worker bees will almost or completely shut- down the queen during that time to control the number of mouths to feed and conserve resources. When that happens, you may not see the queen (as she will often slim-down, too) and eggs, and you may think you’re queenless when you aren’t. [In this case, if you are concerned and can’t determine if you have a queen by any other means, we suggest trying the “Queen Test” noted below and/or trying to kick-start the queen through some 1:1 syrup supplemental feeding for a week or so while periodically reinspecting for eggs, etc.]
c. It can take a newly-emerged virgin queen up to 30 days to get mated and settled-down to lay eggs. Often it does not take that long, but it’s important to be patient and look for the virgin queen before jumping the gun and buying a new queen who will then be killed when you try to introduce her. [Note: It’s a fine balance between being patient and waiting too long and ending up with laying workers, so try to determine if you think you likely had a virgin queen at some point and when so that you don’t go too long and end up with a bigger problem. The “Queen Test” noted below is a good way to check.]
3. Queen Test – Steal a frame with some eggs on it from another hive, mark it (so you remember which frame and when you introduced), and place it into the heart of the brood chamber as a test. We do this regularly when we can’t find the queen and not sure if the virgin made it back from her mating flight or not. If you don’t have a queen (and assuming you don’t have laying workers or a bad queen still emitting pheromones), you will generally see them start to develop emergency cells within a couple days (we generally check again in 3-5 days). You can then decide if you want to let them rear those cells or destroy them all and order a mated queen. (Note: You must always make sure to destroy ALL developing queen cells if you introduce a new queen to help encourage them to accept the new queen and to avoid a queen fight later.) If they have a viable queen (including a virgin queen), they will generally just rear the brood as workers and not make queen cells. In that case, check again in another week and every couple days or week thereafter until you either find signs of a mated queen or think you need to reinspect / re-test with eggs again. (Note: This is just one of the many reasons to always keep more than one hive of bees.)
Hopefully, by now, you’ve picked-up on the importance of doing regular hive inspections, particularly during peak swarming periods. While we know that many beekeepers recommend taking a “hands-off” approach to inspections, we recommend just the opposite. We try to (and recommend the same to others) to inspect all our hives on a weekly basis – especially during swarming season. Since bees can produce and cap a queen cell in 8 days and it can then emerge in 16 days, a regular, weekly inspection cycle makes sense to monitor and deal with potential swarming. In addition to regular inspections, it’s important to keep good notes about every colony (whether you have 1 or 1,000) so that you can remember when you last inspected and what you saw at that time (e.g.: saw queen, saw eggs, didn’t see eggs but saw larvae, etc.) so that you’ll better be able to determine the timeline and likelihood of whether or not you need a queen later when you think you might or just need to be patient and wait a bit longer. It also makes beekeeping more informative, enjoyable and successful as you’re able to balance resources in your hives and deal with other problems when they arise before they become a catastrophe.
Good luck and happy beekeeping!
So, how do you determine whether or not you actually do need a new queen? Well, like so many things in beekeeping, it’s not an easy, guaranteed, one-size-fits-all process to determine. But here are some steps and tips that we here at Beam’s Bees regularly employ.
- Do a thorough inspection of the hive looking for a queen (either your old queen or a new – possibly virgin – one) as well as signs of a queen.
b. As you are inspecting, look and listen for the following:
i. Your old queen (if she was previously marked, she may not be any more as those marks wear off and the nurse bees sometimes clean them off)
ii. A new queen – If you haven’t inspected your hive in the past 16 days, you could have a new queen in there somewhere. If it’s a virgin queen, she will be smaller, faster, more “nervous” and generally harder to find than your old, mated queen, but she may be (likely is) a viable solution to your problem, and at the very least, is emitting pheromones that would likely cause them not to accept a queen you try to introduce as long as she’s there.
iii. Queen cells – These are the peanut-like cells that hang down. You may find them anywhere on the frame (depending on the circumstances as to why they’re making a new queen) and can be hard to spot if they are just starting to make them, only have one or a few, hid them somewhere, or you have a lot of bees covering them (so you might have to carefully move some bees to properly inspect). Be careful when moving and flipping frames around as you have to be gentle with closed cells as the developing queen can be easily injured. You may have developing cells (i.e.: open-ended, elongated cells “charged” with royal jelly and an egg/larva – ignore queen cups that are not charged as they are a regular occurrence), capped/closed cells that look like a peanut shell, or open (used) cells.
1. If you have developing or closed swarm cells (typically along the bottom edges of frames, but not always), a lot of bees, and eggs in cells, you may still have an old queen that hasn’t swarmed yet, and you may be able to find her and make a split.
2. If you have open (used) cells, try to analyze to determine if the cells were opened at the bottom (neatly had the tip cut open – sometimes it is just hinged and will flip back shut) or ripped open from the side. Opened at the bottom indicates a queen emerged from there. Ripped open from the side usually indicates that either that queen was killed in the cell by her sister who emerged first or was a dud and was torn open by the workers. However, if you haven’t inspected your hive in awhile, the workers may even be in various stages of tearing down old cells that a queen emerged from.
iv. Eggs / Larvae / Capped Brood – If you have any of these in your hive, you can use that to help determine when you at least “last” had a laying queen. For worker brood, if you see eggs, you had a laying queen in the past 3 days; open/developing larvae, within the past 8 days; and capped brood, within the past 21 days.
v. Numbers of Bees – Do the numbers of bees seem reduced from what you last saw/expected? If so, they may have swarmed and you need to try to determine when (by using some of the above clues and your notes from your last inspection) to see if you should wait longer to see if you may have a virgin that hasn’t yet started laying.
vi. Demeanor / Sound – Often bees that are “hopelessly queenless” will seem more “buzzy” and agitated. But not always! Sometimes they sound like that when the virgin is out on her mating flight.
vii. Honey / Food Storage – Often bees that are “hopelessly queenless” will more randomly store food and totally fill areas that were previously reserved for brood. But not always! Sometimes during a heavy nectar flow they will quickly dump food into cells and quickly return to the source for more. The first open cell they see, they may put the food in there.
viii. Signs of Laying Workers – This is a bad situation and a real mess to say the least as this usually means they have been “hopelessly queenless” for awhile, but yet if you try to introduce a queen without resolving, they will often kill her as the laying workers are now emitting pheromones. Signs of laying workers include: multiple eggs in cells, eggs on the sides of cells, spotty patterns, eggs/larvae not being tended and reared, capped brood will all be drones, and seemingly desperate attempts to try to make random queen cells containing eggs and drone brood. Often, the eggs of laying workers are larger, too.
2. Other things to look for and consider:
a. Is there any room for the queen to lay eggs? – Sometimes, especially during a strong nectar flow and after a period of queen inactivity (e.g.: while they were replacing a queen), the workers will fill everything up with food, leaving the queen with almost/no place to lay eggs, making them “honey-bound”. That doesn’t mean that you don’t necessarily have a queen, but just that she has nowhere to lay. Try introducing some empty, drawn comb (if you have it, or foundation if you don’t) into a central brood area location and then re-check after a couple days to see if you have eggs.
b. Are you in the midst of a dearth? – In our region, the nectar flow is often very short (e.g.: late-April to early-June) and then there often isn’t much nectar coming in after that. Often, the worker bees will almost or completely shut- down the queen during that time to control the number of mouths to feed and conserve resources. When that happens, you may not see the queen (as she will often slim-down, too) and eggs, and you may think you’re queenless when you aren’t. [In this case, if you are concerned and can’t determine if you have a queen by any other means, we suggest trying the “Queen Test” noted below and/or trying to kick-start the queen through some 1:1 syrup supplemental feeding for a week or so while periodically reinspecting for eggs, etc.]
c. It can take a newly-emerged virgin queen up to 30 days to get mated and settled-down to lay eggs. Often it does not take that long, but it’s important to be patient and look for the virgin queen before jumping the gun and buying a new queen who will then be killed when you try to introduce her. [Note: It’s a fine balance between being patient and waiting too long and ending up with laying workers, so try to determine if you think you likely had a virgin queen at some point and when so that you don’t go too long and end up with a bigger problem. The “Queen Test” noted below is a good way to check.]
3. Queen Test – Steal a frame with some eggs on it from another hive, mark it (so you remember which frame and when you introduced), and place it into the heart of the brood chamber as a test. We do this regularly when we can’t find the queen and not sure if the virgin made it back from her mating flight or not. If you don’t have a queen (and assuming you don’t have laying workers or a bad queen still emitting pheromones), you will generally see them start to develop emergency cells within a couple days (we generally check again in 3-5 days). You can then decide if you want to let them rear those cells or destroy them all and order a mated queen. (Note: You must always make sure to destroy ALL developing queen cells if you introduce a new queen to help encourage them to accept the new queen and to avoid a queen fight later.) If they have a viable queen (including a virgin queen), they will generally just rear the brood as workers and not make queen cells. In that case, check again in another week and every couple days or week thereafter until you either find signs of a mated queen or think you need to reinspect / re-test with eggs again. (Note: This is just one of the many reasons to always keep more than one hive of bees.)
Hopefully, by now, you’ve picked-up on the importance of doing regular hive inspections, particularly during peak swarming periods. While we know that many beekeepers recommend taking a “hands-off” approach to inspections, we recommend just the opposite. We try to (and recommend the same to others) to inspect all our hives on a weekly basis – especially during swarming season. Since bees can produce and cap a queen cell in 8 days and it can then emerge in 16 days, a regular, weekly inspection cycle makes sense to monitor and deal with potential swarming. In addition to regular inspections, it’s important to keep good notes about every colony (whether you have 1 or 1,000) so that you can remember when you last inspected and what you saw at that time (e.g.: saw queen, saw eggs, didn’t see eggs but saw larvae, etc.) so that you’ll better be able to determine the timeline and likelihood of whether or not you need a queen later when you think you might or just need to be patient and wait a bit longer. It also makes beekeeping more informative, enjoyable and successful as you’re able to balance resources in your hives and deal with other problems when they arise before they become a catastrophe.
Good luck and happy beekeeping!
- Beam’s Bees, LLC