Beginner Beekeeping Tips: Judging Queen Age from Appearance and Controlling Cockroaches in the Hive

At present, bee products are widely used in food, cosmetics, industrial applications, medical use and many other areas, and many beginners want to try keeping bees, so for beginners, which beekeeping tips need attention? How can the age of a queen bee be judged from her appearance? How do you prevent and control cockroaches in the hive?

1. How can the age of a queen bee be judged from her appearance?

In beekeeping, the age of the queen bee is especially important. In actual beekeeping, we usually keep a colony strong over the long term by constantly replacing the queen with a young one. To keep a colony strong over the long term, the age of the queen bee is especially important.

In fact, the life of a queen bee is not long, generally only between 3 and 5 years, while the period in which she can truly be used for our production does not exceed two years, and she is truly effective for about one year.

The queen bee is the main reproducer in the colony, and sometimes many changes occur in a single day, so over a short period we can judge the youth of a queen bee:

1. For example, if we have a queen that has just emerged from her cell, we can judge this queen's age over the recent period.

2. For example, if the queen begins test flights, then this queen's age is about three days; if she begins mating, then this queen's age is about one week; if she begins laying eggs, it shows that this queen is already about 10 days old.

This is a rough judgment based on a queen bee's production cycle. At this time the queen grows from small to large, and finally a flocculent substance left by mating appears at the tail end; later the abdomen becomes larger and her gait becomes steady.

3. In addition, judgment can also be made by the queen's fuzz. We all know that when a queen has just emerged from her cell, her abdomen has a lot of fine fuzz, and a newly emerged queen's color is not so deep, the tail end has no luster, and her individual size is about the same as a drone. This kind of change lasts only a few hours; after a few hours, the fuzz on the queen's abdomen begins to darken and become glossy. This is roughly the basic characteristic of a one-day-old queen, so we can still only judge a queen's age over the short term, and all of these are queens within one month.

So how do we judge the age of a queen bee that is more than one month old?

In fact, for an egg-laying queen, as long as she is still laying eggs normally, we have almost no way to determine her exact age and can only determine it roughly. If the queen lays eggs vigorously and is a natural queen, it shows that this queen is no more than two years old; if she is an artificially raised queen, most are queens within one year; an emergency queen may be only a few months old. Of course, this is not absolute, because both emergency queens and natural queens may produce high-quality queens; it can only be said that the rough range is like this.

For old queen bees, they are generally more than two years old, while artificially raised queens may be only about one year old. We can make a rough determination from the queen's outward appearance. We all know that when a queen lays eggs she must put her tail end into the brood cell to lay, so the more eggs these queens lay, the fewer and fewer the fine hairs on their tail end become, and the tail end becomes shiny, shiny as if coated with oil. This shows that this queen is already old, possibly more than two years old.

2. How do you prevent and control cockroaches in the hive?

Use movable hive stands to keep the hive from direct contact with the ground, which helps prevent ants, cockroaches and other insects from crawling directly into the box. Use a galvanized iron sheet cover for the hive lid; while preventing rainwater from seeping in, it also protects the hive lid from being directly exposed to sunlight and other high temperatures that cause expansion and contraction and make the wooden hive lid crack.