Multi queen hives
I had a discussion a few years ago with a lovely man who is a commercial
beekeeper (they do exist) who was also a seasonal bee inspector in an area with
many hives. So he inspected hundreds or even thousands of hives each year. He
reckoned that in a normal year 1 in 20 hives have two laying queens and 1 in 50
three. He said that in inspections where it is necessary to find and cage the
queen (often temporarily) he didn’t stop when he found the queen. He would say
to the beekeeper "that’s a queen but it may not be the only one". He would
then continue until he had checked the whole hive.
There are some honey production systems that intentionally utilise two queens,
separated in two brood nests in the hive. One such that I have used in the
past is named after Snelgrove, which can give enormous honey yields. But it
does require a good deal of hands on with the hives.
Gareth
On 14 Jun 2020, at 16:03, Oxnatbees <oxnatbees@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I often see articles or adverts about how a beekeeper has got a huge honey
harvest because of their special bees, expert management etc. Most of this is
due to two factors:
The amount of forage available that year - a beekeeper can adjust this
somewhat by moving his hives around;
How many bees there are in a hive - which is why honey oriented beekeepers
suppress swarming.
This year we seem to have some involuntary swarm suppression, probably due to
the long dry period. By this I mean some colonies are just increasing in
numbers (and piling on the honey) rather than having a sudden reset to fewer
bees and a brood break.
It strikes me that some of these colonies must now have young queens who have
by now mated, and are living with their mum. These colonies could get really
huge if there is more than one laying queen.
Hmm. I suppose some hard line conventional beekeepers would have killed them
before they emerged to stop swarms... so would still just have one queen.
Thus less honey? I admit I am piling one supposition on top of another. This
is an unusual year and we are all learning from it.
Paul
