# A few Queen cell development questions



## burns375 (Jul 15, 2013)

Heres a few pics from April 2014. I wouldn't worry to much about it, the critical item is to get the cells into a queenless nuc before they hatch. If you move them do it gently. If the cells are no good the bees will tear the down. Usually the cups are 3/4 to full after a few days. 

The less full were just grafted a day or two before the others more full.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Having been raising queens in our local environment for the last four years,
it seems to be that the after the solstice queens will take longer to develop. It is not the typical 16 days anymore sometimes into the 20th days.
For whatever reason I do not know when compare to the Spring raised queens. I suspect the lower night temperature has something to do with it. Using an incubator should help to maintain the temperature uniformity.
So here are my thoughts:

1) How much jelly should be remaining when a queen emerges to help guarantee full development? 
At least a quarter inch should be remaining and more is better to guarantee a good well fed queen.

Is "more than zero" sufficient, or does she need some to go back in and eat after emerging? 
Anything in there should be good because it shows that she already ate enough of them before going into the pupae stage. If it is zero then the queen may not be well fed.
And after she hatched she will not go back in to feed because going back in there she may not know how to back out I have read. So the nurse bees will be tending to her needs after she emerged and usually she will be by the closest pollen and nectar frame. In an incubator situation might be different.

2) What should a queen look like 2 days or a day before emerging? (At what point is she fully colored with wings developed?)
Here is a link to your answer at http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?317060-The-latest-jar-queen-addition!
Once she hatched all her body parts including the wings should be ALL be intact and functional no visible sign of any deformity.

3) When candling a ripe cell, what are you looking for beyond simply verifying presence of the queen? 
The darker queen can be seen using this method. But the lighter color queen such as the Cordovan queen you cannot see her at all because she is somewhat transparent at this stage. If you see a dark spot inside then it is good enough.

Should there be any movement 2 days before emerging? 
There should be some form of movement but the wax is too thick that sometimes you cannot see it clearly.
Is there a visible variation in the size of the queens?
This is hard to see because she is not that visible. The pupae or the black spot should give you an idea of the queen's size.

4) I have heard that the developing queen pupae hangs from a thread during the early part of post-capping development, hence the need to avoid any movement that might jar the queen. If this is correct, at what point is she no longer hanging suspended? 
I believe this is incorrect. Only at the pupae stage when she is in a cocoon form that you can see her detach from the RJ. At the development stage she is still embedded in the RJ post-capping 2-3 days. Avoiding movement during the critical period of development is to avoid loosening the larva away from the RJ.

In the cells I opened today, the larvae were loose in the cells.
This is at the pupae or cocoon stage close to the emerging stage if you can simple wait for a few more days. Patience is the key here at
this time.


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## knute (Mar 10, 2013)

Beautiful pictures, Burns375- thanks for sharing!

Beepro- 20 days for a queen doesn't sound right to me; too long. If the hive is properly populated, the brood nest should remain pretty stable in temperature regardless of solstice, and the hivetool.net monitoring data shows that stability. The only reason the development would lengthen is that the temperature was way down, and I don't think that's happening. In this specific round of grafting, it's highly unlikely- we had daytime temperatures into the high 90's, and the overnights were only low 60's (not cold).

I understand the starting process, and it does make sense that extra royal jelly in the cell implies that they were fed all they could eat.

My biggest single remaining question is what should the queen pupae actually look like (not the cell, the pupae) 2 days and 1 day prior to emergence. I've been searching for some good pictures showing the development of each day during the process and haven't found any yet. Next round, I think I'll harvest a cell a day after they're capped to open up and photograph It's mind boggling to me that they could go from white pupae with almost no coloration on the eyes to fully developed and ready to emerge in 2 or 3 days.

I should finish building my cell incubator. Once they're capped, that seems like a great way to know as closely as possible exactly when they will be ready to emerge, and reduces the need to disturb the finishing hive to pull cells. (I make more queen cells than I can use, so pulling a few cells from the incubator is a big advantage compared to opening a hive over and over as the cells are distributed)


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## marshmasterpat (Jun 26, 2013)

knute - I think at 3 days out, they are mostly white with slightly purple eyes. I know that several of the other insects undergo great changes in the last 2 days of being a pupae. Butterflies get most their color the last 3 days


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Looking a time in reverse, at emergence time, the queen has body color, lots of "youth fuzz", appears damp, eyes are black.

At T-18 to T-30 hrs, she has body color, eyes are dark brown to black. Wings appear crinkled sometimes.

At T-40 to T-56 hrs, the body may be white or cream colored, though some hint of body color may begin to appear. The eyes may be from red to purple to brownish. Wings should have started to develop.

For September queen rearing, I might trust Beepro's observations over hivetool.net ... just a thought. 18 days seems to be toward the outside of queen emergence, but 20 days does not seem all that unreasonable. Wait until Oldtimer, Michael Bush, or Michael Palmer speaks.


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## knute (Mar 10, 2013)

Thanks, all for the input & comments! 

Everything I can find on the topic of timing seems to consistently indicate 16 days +/- 24 hours from egg to emergence, and not to say it doesn't happen, I haven't found anything yet that corroborates a period much longer than that. (Excepting comments that smaller bees tend to develop faster than larger ones, and AHB queens tend to develop faster than european queen bees.) 

The reference to hivetool.net for broodnest temps is related to the trending on a couple of hives that are not far from mine and in a very similar microclimate- for example, see: http://hivetool.net/LandhausHains If the temperature probe is correctly placed in the midst of an active broodnest, the bees tend to hold a remarkably steady temperature regardless of weather. 

I did find a study by Marla Spivak (1992) "Influence of Temperature on Rate of Development and Color Patterns of Queen Honey Bees" at http://ee.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/2/364 , but it's behind a paywall and I don't have access; I'd love to know what the range was that she measured in days of development- they varied the temperature between 30.5 and 35.5dC. What little info that's in the abstract indicates that there is definitely a variation in development time, and that colder is slower. She used 2 lines of bees, black and yellow, and observed that the black line required significantly fewer accumulated degree-days for development than the yellow line at all temperatures. Just musing on that, I wonder if the slightly faster development of black bees might be helpful to varroa resistance vs. yellow bees?

In any case, it boggles my mind how much the queen develops during the last couple of days prior to emergence- that's totally amazing to me.

Next round of grafting, I'm definitely sacrificing some cells to take daily pictures to document the development, and I'll post them here.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

kilocharlie said:


> For September queen rearing, I might trust Beepro's observations over hivetool.net ... just a thought.


You see, my little queen cells experiment along with my keen observation really confirmed the findings.
The reason for the longer queen development at this time is that they are the 80% Italians/10% carnis mixed. And these are the bigger queen larvae too. That might explain the longer development time because our weather was colder back then. Now the weather is in the upper 100s. 105,6F today. Yes, crazy weather I know.
Thanks for your research to confirmed my findings. As to why the queen larvae develop faster in the last few days was that some bee genetics will devleop faster than the others. Maybe the next time I can do an experiment to compare the different queen type such as the Russians vs the Cordovans or Italians. 
I found out that the color of the queen bee has no correlation with the varroa resistance of the bees. It is more of the mite resistant traits that the queen and drones carry. Because the Russians, carnis and Italians all have this mite fighting traits as well. So the color of the queen has nothing to do with it. I find that the bee world is more and more fascinating after doing these my little bee experiments.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Also that a shorter development time for a _queen_ won't matter much in varroa tolerance. If there's a mite feeding on your queen cell and laying her baby mites in there - she won't likely be reigning very long as queen!

If she survives at all, she'll probably be superceded ASAP. If her worker sisters express any VSH traits, she'll likely get torn down before she's pipping.

If it translates to faster _drone_ development, that could be a different story with regard to varroa tolerance. That might actually help.


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