Chapter 6 · Quiz

Chapter 6 Quiz: Queen Matters

18 questions from lessons 42–47. Answer from memory first, then check the lesson if you're unsure. This quiz is for your own practice; nothing is graded.

Lesson 42: What a Good Queen Looks Like: Brood Pattern and Laying

  1. What does a good queen's brood pattern look like?
  2. Spotty brood shows up in all four of your hives at once. Is a bad queen the likely cause?
  3. Why do young queens tend to make better colonies?

Lesson 43: The Queenless Colony: Signs and Fixes

  1. Name two signs a colony may be queenless.
  2. You find no eggs, but there's a queen cell with a neat round opening at the bottom. What should you do?
  3. How does the "frame of eggs" test work?

Lesson 44: Laying Workers and Drone-Laying Queens

  1. Why can't a worker bee lay eggs that become workers?
  2. What's the best fix for a laying-worker colony?
  3. You see bullet-shaped drone brood in worker cells, one neat egg per cell, and you spot the queen. What's the problem?

Lesson 45: Requeening: Why and How

  1. Give two advantages of a young queen.
  2. Why wait at least 12–24 hours after removing the old queen before introducing a new one?
  3. Why is spring an easier time to requeen?

Lesson 46: Introducing a New Queen

  1. How can you tell if bees are accepting a caged queen?
  2. Why are push-in cages more likely to succeed?
  3. The bees keep rejecting every queen you introduce. What might be wrong?

Lesson 47: Uniting Two Colonies

  1. Why does the newspaper method work?
  2. Which colony goes on top when uniting a laying-worker colony with a queenright one?
  3. Why shouldn't you unite a diseased colony with a healthy one?

Answers

Show answers

Printed in the next issue, or check them now if you've finished.

  1. Solid, with few skipped cells, spreading out from the center, brood of the same age together.
  2. Less likely; when several colonies show it, something is probably killing brood (disease, mites, cold, pesticides).
  3. They lay more eggs, give off more pheromone, and are less likely to swarm or be superseded.
  4. Any two of: no eggs or young larvae; emergency queen cells; agitated bees fanning and roaring when opened; polished empty cells.
  5. Be patient; a virgin queen has probably emerged and may take about two weeks to mate and start laying.
  6. Add a frame of eggs and young larvae; if the colony builds queen cells on it within about three days, it was queenless.
  7. Workers can't mate, so their eggs are unfertilized, and unfertilized eggs become drones.
  8. Combine it with a queenright colony using the newspaper method (laying-worker colonies usually kill introduced queens).
  9. A drone-laying queen; replace her.
  10. Any two of: lays more eggs; gives off more pheromone; stimulates foraging; less swarming; less likely to be superseded.
  11. So the colony realizes it's queenless and is more ready to accept a new queen.
  12. Colonies are smallest, so the old queen is easier to find and new queens are accepted more readily.
  13. They walk calmly over the cage and feed her; rejecting bees cluster tightly and bite the wires.
  14. She can start laying while protected, and a laying queen's pheromones make her more attractive to the workers.
  15. Another queen or virgin is loose in the colony, queen cells were missed, or the colony has laying workers.
  16. The bees chew through the paper slowly, so by the time they meet, their colony scents have mixed and they don't fight.
  17. The laying-worker colony goes on top.
  18. You'd spread the disease to the healthy colony.

★ = a topic on the Georgia Certified Beekeeper exam list.

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