Good Queen? Bad Queen? - Adventures In Beekeeping
Channel: Adventures In Beekeeping
Date: 2020-12-29

We are always thinking about the queen.  Is she in the hive?  Is she in good condition? Is she well mated? Is she laying a good brood pattern?  Will she be superseded?  As a new beekeeper, I just want the thrill of seeing the queen during a hive inspection.  After the mating flights, the queen returns to the hive to fulfill her destiny to become an egg laying machine.  She can lay 1200 eggs per day, 2200 eggs per day, or even as many as 3500 eggs per day, as Rev. Langstroth proposes in his book Hive and the Honey Bee.  https://books.google.com/books?id=y2g1KpD3tN8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

After reading an article in December 2015 issue of American Bee Journal by Larry Conner called "Beekeeping By The Numbers", I understand now that the number of eggs the queen lays per day varies based on the season or other factors.  In the late winter and early spring the numbers are higher as she builds up the hive to maximize the number of workers available for the spring nectar flow.  In the late fall the number of eggs laid will be lower.  There may be other factors for variations in the number of eggs laid per day. Beekeepers often use number of eggs laid per day as a measure to determine if the queen is doing a good job or if she is doing poorly and needs to be replaced.  

How many eggs is my queen laying at a given time?  Larry Conner describes an easy way to calculate the average number of eggs laid per day.  The idea is to count the number of capped brood cells and divide by 12.  12 is the number of days a worker cell is capped.   

Cells per square Inch = 25 
Cells per deep frame per side = 3500
Square inches per deep frame per side = 140

I would like to demonstrate this process of "gestimating" the number of eggs laid per day based on video captures from a video I recorded on June 23, 2020.  

Langstroth on the Hive and Honey Bee.https://books.google.com/books?id=y2g1KpD3tN8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Beekeeping By The Numbers, Larry Conner, American Bee Journal, December 1, 2015,  Read December 28, 2020. https://americanbeejournal.com/beekeeping-by-the-numbers-2/