One date in, the rest of the queen's first month out: when she emerges, when she flies to mate, when to look for eggs, and when no eggs means trouble. The sources do not agree to the day, so every date is a window.
How to read it
- Likely is the day most of the sources below give. Window is the spread between them; a hot spell moves things earlier, and cold or wet weather holds mating flights back.
- After a split or a lost queen, the bees raise the new queen from a young larva or an egg already in the comb. Penn State says larvae under three days old can become queens and eggs hatch at about three days; the Ontario sheet says a queen can be raised from any fertilized egg. From that we work out that her egg was laid 0 to 6 days before the day you start; Bush counts from 4 days.
- A capped cell can be anywhere from just capped to about to open, so its window starts today and the likely day is the latest one Bush expects (day 8).
- The calendar file puts each step on its likely day and the window in the note.
- This page only counts days. It says nothing about whether a colony should be split, combined or requeened.
Sources
- Penn State Extension, An Introduction to Queen Honey Bee Development: eggs hatch “about three days after being laid”; “all female larvae under three days old” can become a queen; the cell is capped “about nine days after being laid as an egg”; “about 16 days from egg to queen”; a virgin queen “spends five to eight days in the hive prior to taking her mating flight(s)”.
- Ontario Beekeepers' Association Tech Transfer Program, Honey Bee Queen Biology (info sheet), p. 1: the queen emerges “after 16 days”, goes on mating flights “throughout the first 2 weeks post-emergence”, and “can begin laying eggs around 2-3 days after her mating period has finished”.
- Michael Bush, Beekeeping Mathematics (a beekeeper's reference page): queen capped 8 ±1, emerged 16 ±2 (“fifteen if it's hot out”), laying 28 ±5 days from the egg; a capped cell should emerge within “9 days, but probably eight”; a walk-away split gives a laying queen in “about 24 days +-5 days”.
- The Apiarist, Timing is everything (a beekeeper's blog, UK, 6 May 2022): capped on the 9th day, emerges on the 16th; 5–6 days to maturity; laying “2-3 days after returning from her last mating flight”; “if they're not mated within about 4 weeks of emergence then they've blown it”; “leave a new queen a minimum of a fortnight before checking if she's laying”. These are the only figures here from outside North America.