Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: bill on August 24, 2005, 07:46:14 pm

Title: bees raising their own queens
Post by: bill on August 24, 2005, 07:46:14 pm

I was reading one of the posts and about afb and I think someone said that worker bees can make queens from the eggs they lay I didn't think this was possible can someone explain it to me

Title: bees raising their own queens
Post by: Joseph Clemens on August 24, 2005, 08:02:09 pm

http://www.beesource.com/pov/lusby/bsmay1991.htm

Title: bees raising their own queens
Post by: Michael Bush on August 25, 2005, 10:47:29 am

AFB?  That's American Foulbrood.  AHB maybe?  Africanized Honey Bees?

It is rare in either race, but has been documented in EHB as well.  In fact the study quoted above is not about AHB.  It's about Lusby's bees before anyone started trying to claim they were AHB in order to discredit small cell.

Title: Bees raise their own queens
Post by: Joseph Clemens on August 25, 2005, 02:17:34 pm

BTW: no big miracle, honeybees always raise their own queens. Even humans known as queen breeders depend on nurse bees to do most of the work for them. I have not yet heard of any honeybee brood, queens included, that were entirely hand raised by humans without nurse bees.

Title: bees raising their own queens
Post by: bill on August 25, 2005, 06:48:33 pm

I guess I should have been more clear ' raise queens from eggs layed by laying worker bees. '

Title: bees raising their own queens
Post by: jefftck on August 25, 2005, 07:20:04 pm

Quote from: bill

I guess I should have been more clear ' raise queens from eggs layed by laying worker bees. '

From all the info I've seen and read they can't raise a gueen from a workers egg because it's not fertile, you will get drones
They can raise a gueen from an egg laid be a queen if it's under two or three days old

Title: bees raising their own queens
Post by: Michael Bush on August 26, 2005, 11:16:27 am

Queens raised from eggs from laying workers (or unfertilized queens) was what both Joseph and I were first refering to.  It has been observed and documented occuring in EHB back as far as the middle 1800's.  But it is not a common occurance.