ANTSTORE World of Ants

[JimmyVe]

This is very cool! You pictures are stunning!

Keep it coming!

[jeffknott]

Hi Adam
Just been looking at the progress of your colony and its sounding weak at the moment.However its very early May at the moment so lets hope there is a masive improvement and that by summer you have thousands of bees to observe.
Regards Jeff

[adam james]

Hello Jeff the colony are hanging in there but the weather is not helping either. I to hope there will be a massive improvment and im confident there will be. Cheers for helping me build there new hive and its great to see you joined this group.

Regards Adam

[JimmyVe]

Great pictures Adam, seems they are doing very well.

[Phasmid]

Thats great stuff Adam, thanks .

[damondeionno]

Adam

Fantastic pics. The observation hive you've built looks amazing.

As I understood the life-cycle of the honeybee, the old queen leaves with a swarm before the new queen emerges. In the situation you currently have, there aren't enough workers for a swarm, and the new queen may well emerge with the old queen in the colony. Assuming this happens and she flies off to mate, what will happen when she returns?

[adam james]

Hello damondeionno Honey bees do swarm indeed but they also reproduce in anouther two ways. Should the queen get killed or die they will make a emergency queen out of a fertilised egg or larva that is less then two days old. If the queen is present and failing in egg production due to illness , old age or just not top quality the workers will then choose again a egg or larva under 2 days old and rear a new queen. Now the second method in bee keeping terms is called supersedure. Wot happens is this the workers make a queen cell and after it has been capped and left to develop inside the new young virgin queen hatches and after a few days goes on mating flights. Once she has mated and returns to the colony she will start to lay. Now a perfect supersedure means that mother and daughter queen can actually co exist and lay well into the end of the season but over winter or early spring the old queen usally vanishes. Sometimes thou the workers get impatient and kill the queen as soon as the new queen starts to lay. Mine have destroyed the queen cell now before it hatched. It was only the massive increase of workers added that caused them to start a queen cell. Now the queen has spread her smell around them all they have given up and just teared down the queen cell as its not needed.

Hope that answers your question

Regards

Adam