Queen Piping Question

[kennethpyburn]

I am fairly certain that for the first time I heard one of my queens piping yesterday.
Do only unmated queens pipe or will a mated queen pipe? This colony had swarmed and I expected by yesterday to have seen eggs from the new queen, however there were none, but I did hear the piping.
This queen would have been at least 5-7 days old as on 5/16 I saw a queen cell that had been opened and they did not build any cells on a frame of eggs and larvae that I added on the same day as an insurance policy against there being no queen in the colony.

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

I am fairly certain that for the first time I heard one of my queens piping yesterday.
Do only unmated queens pipe or will a mated queen pipe? This colony had swarmed and I expected by yesterday to have seen eggs from the new queen, however there were none, but I did hear the piping.
This queen would have been at least 5-7 days old as on 5/16 I saw a queen cell that had been opened and they did not build any cells on a frame of eggs and larvae that I added on the same day as an insurance policy against there being no queen in the colony.

hello. I got a rather strange machine translation of your message. 😁 But I will try to answer. )) When the uterus is born, it matures for 5 days in the hive, then it flies for 3 days, if it returned from the mating flight safely, then for another 3 days there is a migration of sperm into the uterus and other processes, and only then it can lay eggs. These indicators are averaged, and very dependent on weather conditions. If she was born on May 16, then she should lay eggs on May 28-29.

 

[Breeder of queens Koss]

usually a virgin queen sings in the hive. Whether the queen sings in the cell when the colony swarms, I do not remember, so as not to say false information. My bees practically don't swarm.

 

[Grant]

Some say that piping is to indicate swarming, but that is unlikely the most probable explanation is the queen is signalling to find other virgin queens to fight it out. You could end up with 2 damaged virgins as a result or you could find both and pinch one out.

 

[Dave Black]

Pipping (or ‘quacking’) made by virgins are call and response signals made by pulsing vibrations of the flight muscles transmitted locally through the wax comb substrate. The ‘toots are generally a higher pitch and longer than the lower pitch ‘quack’ response. The tooting is known to delay the emergence of a virgin and encourages worker to confine the virgins sometime for days (‘bees take quite elaborate steps to prevent queens fighting). Emerged queens also pipe, and the workers seem to freeze on the spot to ‘listen’ (through their feet). Workers are also known to pipe when returning from foraging or dancing but more often before a swarm departs, when the pipers are the scouts driving the swarm.
Honeybees are very noisy.