Queenless Agitation and Queenlessness
Krankheiten
Queenless agitation describes the behavior of a colony that has lost its queen or no longer perceives her as sufficient.
Queenless agitation describes the behavior of a colony that has lost its queen or no longer perceives her as sufficient. Causes include loss of the queen during an inspection, a failed mating flight, a swarm, the queen's age, or damage to her during requeening. Because the pheromone given off by the queen is missing, the colony loses its order.
On opening the hive, the sound is the first thing to notice. Instead of a calm hum, the bees roar up loudly and do not settle down again, the sound seeming plaintive and agitated. The bees run restlessly over the combs, and the colony often reacts more irritably than usual. The decisive finding, however, is a look into the brood nest: no eggs, no youngest larvae, but possibly emergency queen cells on open larvae. If the condition persists for a long time, humped brood from laying workers follows.
The test frame method (Weiselprobe) provides certainty. An open brood comb with eggs and the youngest larvae from a healthy colony is hung into the colony. After about three to four days, it is checked: if the colony has started emergency queen cells, it was queenless. If the comb remains unchanged, a queen is present, possibly just not yet laying. Patience is important, because after a swarm or a requeening, a young queen needs several weeks before she starts laying, during which time a test frame is easily misread.
Several remedies are available: introducing a mated queen in an introduction cage, leaving one good emergency queen cell in place and breaking off the rest, or uniting the colony with a queenright one. In late summer and autumn, uniting is usually the better decision, because a new mating flight can then barely succeed anymore and the colony would otherwise end up as a winter loss. Small, healthy queenless units can also be brushed off and distributed among other colonies.
Hasty action should be avoided. Frequent opening and searching increases the unrest and costs time and warmth. It is likewise not sensible to introduce an expensive queen into a supposedly queenless colony without a prior test frame, because if a queen is in fact present, the introduced one will be stung to death.