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 A queen surrounded by her attendants (retinue) |   queen  See ita fully developed female honeybee, larger and longer than a worker bee or drone; here the queen is shown surrounded by her retinue of attendants, who care for her needs in the hive. See also: castes, Queen and Her Brood, Queen Laying Eggs, retinue | |
 Wooden queen cage with a queen and her attendants (retinue)  Preparing to install a queen cage |
See ita small, wooden cage containing several compartments and covered with a wire mesh; the cage contains a queen honeybee and several attendants (her retinue of worker bees). A queen cage can also be plastic, as shown on the right; these cages are much easier to insert between the brood frames than are wooden cages. The queen and attendants are confined together so the attendants can care for her during shipping. The queen either accompanies a package of bees or is shipped separately for introduction into a queenless colony. You can see the queen in the top, close-up picture, marked with a blue dot. You cannot see the queen in the picture at bottom, as her cage is covered with worker bees from the package. Workers in a package normally surround the queen cage during shipping, which is the same behavior they exhibit in a swarm, when they surround the queen to protect her and to keep her warm in cooler weather. | |
 Queen cage containing candy |  queen cage candy See itcandy made by kneading powdered sugar with invert sugar syrup until it forms a stiff dough; used as food in queen cages while the queen and her retinue of attendants are in the cage. The candy is also used when the queen cage is introduced into a colony during requeening to isolate the queen several days so the colony can adjust to her pheromone scent and more readily accept her. This waiting period is determined by the length of time it takes the other bees in the colony to eat the candy plug from the outside. See also: invert sugar syrup, requeening | |
 A swarm cell | queen cell an elongated brood cell in which a young queen is reared before adulthood. A queen cell hangs vertically from the face of the comb, as opposed to worker cells or drone cells, which are horizontally positioned within the network of the normal honeycomb structure. A queen cell is much larger than a normal brood cell, and is approximately an inch long with an inside diameter of about 1/3 inch. The colony constructs queen cells for two purposes: replacing a weak or missing queen (supersedure), or in preparation for swarming. Supersedure rarely results in swarming. If a colony is superseding a queen, they will construct several queen cells on one or more brood frames, in the middle or near the top of the frame. If a colony is preparing to swarm, it will build many more queen cells, called swarm cells, nearer to the bottom of the frames. See also: bee metamorphosis, supersedure, swarm, swarm cell | |
 Clipping a queen's wings | queen clipping See it removing a portion of one or both front wings of a queen to prevent her from flying; this practice has been found to be generally ineffective as a method of swarm control, since the queen falls on the ground in front of the hive, and the swarm returns to the queen on the ground. If the queen is unable to reenter the hive, the queen will die, and the colony is likely to also die. | |
 Queen cup used for rearing queens | queen cup See it a cup-shaped cell made of beeswax or plastic which hangs vertically in a hive and which may become a queen cell if an egg or larva is placed in it and bees add wax to it; also known as a cell cup | |
 Light-weight plastic queen excluder
| queen excluder See it a grid of metal or plastic that fits between the brood boxes and the honey supers; the spaces in the grid allow worker bees to freely pass from the brood boxes up to the honey supers, but the spaces are too small to allow the queen. Therefore, no brood is raised in the honey combs, keeping them free for 100% honey and pollen storage. Usually pollen is stored in the brood boxes, so the honey supers contain only honey. See also: Queen Excluder | |
 | queen substance pheromone material secreted from glands in the queen bee and transmitted throughout the colony by workers to alert other workers of the queen's presence See also: pheromone |
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