Queen Bee Health

As mentioned previously I'm trying my hand at queen rearing so I'm interested in what a healthly queen looks like and her behaviour. The queen bee is an egg laying machine. All members of the colony are her children so the temperament of the hive is very significantly affected by the queens health.

These two photos show queens from separate colonies. The larger one, on the left, is the queen from my hive. The smaller once, on the right, is a queen I grafted and is currently being raised in a nuc. She is not laying yet, which may explain why she is smaller. I'll take another photo of her before I send her away to see if she is any bigger.

These two queens are mother and daughter. The mother, on the left, has a much longer abdomen than her daughter. This may be to do with the age of the grub I grafted, the hive conditions when the bees were growing here or just the fact that show is not laying yet.

Both queens have clean, golden bodies. I believe this can indicate their age, they darken as they grow older. If you look closely at the mother (left) you'll notice she is missing a wing. I'm not sure when she lost this but it was obviously after her mating flight as she is laying well. You might also have noticed the varroa mite on the body of the bee directly to the right of the daughter queen.

Laying pattern and habits can also tell you a lot about the health of the queen. This photo shows brood as various stages of development. The white, rice shaped objects, are eggs. They will stay like this for 3 days before hatching into grubs. The grubs are the wet spots at the bottom of the cells. These grubs will grow until they are ready to be capped, like the grub at the top right of the photo.
This queen is laying well as every cell has an egg. Older, failing queens and drone layers often lay multiple eggs in one cell.


There are many signs of queen and colony health, these are a couple I saw on my last inspection.