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The term “tinder”, depending on the context, can mean a bee colony, and an individual bee, and even an unfertilized queen. But these concepts are closely related to each other. A family becomes a tinder bee if a tinder bee plays the role of a queen in it. And a bee can appear in a family only in case of loss of a full-fledged female.
Who are tinders
If the queen died in the colony, after some time the bees begin to feed each other with royal jelly. Since the milk contains hormones that stimulate egg-laying, some of the bees that have eaten “inappropriate” food are reborn.
An ordinary bee is an underdeveloped female, incapable of laying eggs. But in a bee stimulated with royal jelly, ovipositors begin to develop. The number of ovipositors can reach 12.
This female starts laying eggs. But since she has neither a seminal receptacle nor spermatozoa in it, she can only lay eggs with a haploid set of chromosomes. That is, to produce drones. From the point of view of collecting supplies and the further survival of the family, drones are useless. The existing population of working individuals will not be able to work for everyone, and in winter the colony will die of starvation.
A family in which there is no queen, but there is a reborn working individual, is also called a tinder for brevity. And the difference between concepts depends on the context.
But this means that the queen is too old and unable to fully sow eggs. In any case, the presence of only drone inoculation is a reason to be wary and take a closer look at the colony.
tinder bees
Due to the long absence of a real queen, her role can be taken by an ordinary bee, which for some time fed on royal jelly and began to lay unfertilized eggs. Although workers may begin to treat such a tinder bee as a real queen, only drones can appear from unfertilized eggs.
Since drones require a lot of space in the cells, the bees cover the combs with convex lids. A lot of cells closed with similar caps is called “humped seed”. The appearance of humpback sowing in the hive is a signal that the family is turning into a tinder.
The beekeeper, when such a sowing appears, needs to carefully examine the swarm. If a real female is not found, urgent measures must be taken to save the colony.
If tinder bees appeared in the presence of a real queen, this means that the queen needs to be changed: she is too old. Many beekeepers prefer to change females every year or two to prevent drone colonies.
Since the tinder bee is a reborn working individual, it has no differences from other bees. Accordingly, it is impossible to distinguish the tinder bee from the rest of the colony by eye. They differ from worker bees only in their ability to lay eggs.
Can tinder bees fly
Bees do not have individuals incapable of flight. Even a fertilized queen, if necessary, can rise with a swarm and fly to another place. But this happens in some exceptional cases and usually with wild bees. The family is just escaping from danger.
In a normal situation, the queen does not need to fly anywhere, and it may seem that she is not able to take to the air. Able. For a tinder bee, which is in fact a working individual, flight does not present any difficulties at all. She begins to have problems with orientation in space. She does not consider it necessary to fly, everything she needs is “brought home”.
Uterus tinder
The queen bee is an ordinary queen who, for some reason, cannot lay fertilized eggs. Sometimes the female is simply not capable of flight due to deformity. Some queens emerge from chrysalis with underdeveloped wings, others may damage them by accident. Contrary to the opinion sometimes encountered, “native” drones will not fertilize their queen. The queen needs flight to mate. It copulates always in the air. Or the female simply did not meet the male. The uterus may remain unfertilized if the weather has been unsuitable for flying for a long time.
From the eggs of unfertilized females, only drones come out. It is impossible to fix such a queen. It is removed immediately when too many drones are found in the colony and a normal queen is placed in the family or a one-day sowing is placed from another hive. With the latter option, the bees themselves will grow themselves a new queen.
Family tinder
A tinder family is a colony that has been without a queen for a long time. These bees do not have a fresh set of eggs from which they can hatch a new queen. Due to the lack of larvae that need to be supplied with milk, the bees begin to feed each other. As a result, some individuals develop reproductive functions, and they begin to sow eggs.
Tinder bees lay their eggs in normal bee cells, but only drones hatch from such eggs. There is little room for males in the honeycomb, and the bees seal the cells with convex lids.
You can still try to fix such a family, in contrast to the queen bee. But it will be necessary to remove the tinder bee from the family, if it is there.
Causes of appearance
The main reason for the appearance of tinder in most cases is the death of the uterus. The queen may die from illness. Often due to the mistake of the beekeepers, when the fight against drones was carried out too zealously, the bees lost their protection against natural enemies.
Also, with a small number of drones in their own apiary and the absence of other bee colonies nearby, the queen may return unfertilized from a flyby. In this case, she begins to lay unfertilized eggs.
Two queens in the hive are also almost certain death of the colony in winter, since the bees do not have enough strength to keep warm when 2 balls are formed instead of one.
Tinder families also appear when a queen is too old, who already sows too few fertilized eggs. A family that has begun to swarm can become a tinderbox. Moreover, such a colony passes into the stage of tindering faster than any other. This is explained by the fact that young bees still have nothing to do, and they begin to feed each other with milk.
What is fraught with their appearance
With the appearance of tinders of any variety, the consequences are the same: the death of the colony. This is provided that the beekeeper will not take any measures. When caring for bees, this problem is always solved. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes you have to tinker. And first you need to find a tinder bee in the colony.
If action is not taken as soon as possible, the changes in the colony will become irreversible. The bees will not accept another queen and will kill her. Such a family can no longer be combined with another, since they will not be able to feed anyone other than drones. It is easier to prevent the appearance of a tinder family than to correct it later. But the cases are different.
How to detect
A tinder family is found by the “humped sowing”. Further understand why this happened. The appearance of such a family may be a consequence of the presence of an unfertilized uterus. The queen is distinguished by her appearance, and it is not difficult to find her.
If there is no queen in the tinder family and bees perform its functions, you will have to tinker with the definition of “pests”. You need to watch the bees: a few individuals are always head to the “womb”. There is also an easier way to get rid of a tinder bee without finding out who it is. Moreover, there may be several such bees. The swarm is collected, carried away and poured onto the ground. Workers will return to the hive, and tinder bees will get lost.
How to fix tinder: methods and tips
The easiest way is to prevent the appearance of tinder families than to correct them later. To prevent the appearance of tinder, families are controlled. If necessary, the queens are replaced by a “quiet shift”.
If the colony has lost the queen, but there is uterine brood, you need to follow the release of a new female on the 16th day after sowing the eggs. On the 10th day after the birth of a new queen, it is checked whether she is fertilized and whether she is present in the hive at all.
In queenless families, they put frames from other hives with one-day sowing. While the workers are busy with larvae, they will not feed each other, which means they will not create tinder bees and the family will remain healthy.
With a similar purpose to prevent mutual feeding with milk, an old queen in a cage is placed in a queenless hive or a dead one is laid. The scent of the queen also prevents the bees from feeding each other.
Most often, the appearance of tinder in the apiary is a consequence of carelessness, inexperience or carelessness of the beekeeper. But this happens and you have to correct the situation. The method of correction depends on the season, the availability of “spare” queens and the state of the bee swarm.
How to fix a rotten bee colony in spring
It is easiest to solve the problem in the spring. There are no tinder bees in spring. If there is only drone brood in the colony, then the queen is to blame. Unlike bees, she sows eggs correctly: one at a time and in the center of the cell. Exception: a crippled female. Such a queen can sow eggs from the edge. But only drones come out of unfertilized eggs, and the situation must be corrected before the family is actually still normal and has not turned into a drone.
The defective uterus is removed and a new one is placed in its place. In the absence of a “reserve” queen, the orphaned colony is combined with another, weak, family and later layering is done.
Breeding new females in the spring is considered impractical, since it is still cold and there are not enough drones. But it all depends on the region. In the south, queens can be bred in late spring.
How to fix tinder in the summer
In a similar way, a rotten colony is corrected in the summer. The old queen is destroyed and a full-fledged one is planted instead. A weak family is united with another.
Such a colony is unprofitable. The middle one works only for itself. A beekeeper benefits from a strong colony capable of processing more than 10 frames.
In an orphaned family, a new uterus can be brought out in the summer:
- destroy the bad;
- after some time, destroy all queen cells in this colony;
- put a control frame from another family with one-day inoculation;
- carry out standard care;
- control the exit of the new queen and the first sowing.
After it becomes clear that the queen and her sowing are full-fledged, frames from other hives are substituted into the colony with sowing almost ready for release to strengthen the family.
How to fix a family tinder in the fall
In the fall, if possible, a new queen is also planted in the tinder family. If there is none, the swarms are merged.
Breeding a new female makes sense only if she has time to leave the mother liquor in early September and fly out for a flyby before September 15th. Otherwise, in the spring, a tinder family will turn out again.
Here it is also necessary to take into account that working individuals that appeared in August-September leave for wintering. But the tinder families do not have a good fetal queen, and the colony will go to wintering weakened. To avoid this situation, the orphaned swarm is attached to another family.
How to fix tinder if there are no spare queens
In the absence of reserve queens in the fall, tinders are combined with a layer from another hive. Working individuals from the layering will kill the tinder bees themselves, if there are any. In spring and summer, you can bring your own new uterus to the tinders, but the process is quite complicated.
In the evening, an hour before the bees spend the night, all frames are removed from the hive. After returning home all the inhabitants, they close the notch and bring the hive into the basement. The ceiling canvas is removed to make it cooler. The hive must be well ventilated, otherwise the swarm will suffocate. Under such conditions, the tinder is kept for a day.
The next day, another one is placed in the place where the hive was. It forms a layer of 2 frames at the exit and 1 with a one-day sowing. There they also put the frames taken away from the tinders.
Late in the evening, a blanket is laid in front of the new hive and bridges are made from sticks to the notch so that the bees can climb them.
The tinder is taken out of the basement, shaken out on a blanket and driven into a new hive with a smoker. After spending the night in a new place and thinking carefully about their behavior, the next day the tinders become an ordinary bee family.
A similar operation can be performed with a new queen or, if there is a layer, with a female. When correcting tinders with the help of cuttings in the first days, the queen will have to be protected using a special small cage, since at first the tinders may not accept her.
If there was only a spare female, then she is placed in the basement in a cage along with tinders. In this case, by the time they are released from captivity, the tinder workers have already managed to accept a new queen.
There are many different ways to fix tinders, but, according to beekeepers, this one gives a 100% result.
Conclusion
A drone, unlike a drone, is an unconditional evil and does not depend on the context in which this term is used. Any tinder must be eliminated as quickly as possible. Separate individuals by physical destruction, a swarm – with the help of re-education.
