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NEW ZEALAND BEEKEEPER, FEBRUARY 2017
SUPERSEDURE —AN AUTUMN PHENOMENON: HOW COMMON IS IT? BURNING QUESTIONS
Paul Burgess
In late autumn, by chance I observed an instance of aged supersedure in process. A three-year-old queen was in the midst of handing over the reins to her daughter, sharing the same frame and each entertaining a respective retinue. (Incidentally, I wonder how many cases such as this I have misjudged over the years; i.e., replacing an older queen while being unaware that her daughter is laying and ready to challenge a newly introduced caged queen?)
This colony had ticked along with an average production record and clearly the queen would have never qualified as a breeder. This situation would be ideal for the urban hobbyist, as there would be no need to assuage the neighbours when the hive swarmed and no angst at requeening time. The larva chosen by this natural intervention would likely have been of an appropriate age (bees know best when it comes to larval age), and well fed for longer as it was queenright rather than an emergency situation, so the resulting queen should have been well developed. Understandably, contemporary breeding criteria are weighted for production, brood patterns, disease resistance, temperament and varroa resistance. A three-year-old queen, for example, has at the very least proved that she is a stayer. I did find one recent article that acknowledged aged supersedure as a selection consideration. West Coast sage Gary Jeffery mentioned this in his 'ZORRO' strikes (Jeffery, 2015) method of classifying breeding queens. It is important to distinguish the aged (three-year-old) queen and not a younger queen who is failing due to disease; e.g., nosema. In his text, Woodward (2007) cautions that many average queens are superseded earlier and that you should ensure that the "queen in the hive is not the mother of the workers" (p. 104), which makes the case for tagging the queen so that you can confirm its origin. The incidence of supersedure has been quantified (Hooper, 2010), who says, "I would guess that some 5% of colonies with 2 year old queens are in this state each year …", and by Cramp (2008) as "rare" (p. 109). DavidWoodward suggests that "on rare occasions two queens may co-exist for many months (p. 3). The burning question: is there a genetic predisposition to suggest that this trait is carried forward within a colony?
An old queen sharing duties with her daughter. How long does this partnership last? Are they both laying?
Queen and daughter entertaining their respective retinues. "Do we need the old girl any longer?" Photos: Paul Burgess.
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