# Counting Queen Cells in the Warre?



## lamarcarama (May 3, 2015)

I adore my Warre hive. But sometimes the fixed comb is an inconvenience. Like today! I performed a split 5 days ago and decided to take a peek in the queenless half to see if they were making emergency cells. A quick glance under the brood nest box showed a few (4 or 5? I got a good pic of one swimming in royal jelly). But there'd be no good way to tell if there were emergency queen cells on the face of the comb, right? I suppose I could smoke the daylights out of them and try to drive all the bees off the comb but that seems both nasty and not very Warre.

Anyway, so to my question: How do you all figure out how many queen cells you have when you perform a split? Or do you not care and just come back in a month and look for brood?

Thanks! Love love love this forum.


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## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

Queen cell or queen cell cup?


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## lamarcarama (May 3, 2015)

Queen cells. Sorry for the confusion. I know some folks don't like to have 15 or 20 queen cells when they requeen since it can trigger swarming. (I see things like "keep the best 4 cells" or "keep only 2 cells on a single frame"). And I was wondering how I'd even know how many I had since I can't closely inspect the comb that isn't near the bottom edge.


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

Natural queen cells in a fixed comb hive (not a frame hive) you find between the first bottom and the second box. Counting is pretty easy. Cut them out for usage in mini nucs.

In a brood split there is no real need to count every queen cell - what should be that good for? You see and find cells, remove all you find but one. Choose the one that has the most bees clinging to it, that usually is the best cell and later queen. Bees' choice. 

In a split the surplus queen cells get torned down by the bees/new queen, because the hive is weakened by the splitting. If not, your split is too big. Usually one Warré box makes a perfect split size. 

There is no need to count cups...better wait for capped cells. Because a lot of cups - especially emergency ones - get chewed down. Bees in their hurry to raise an emergency queen often choose too old larvae and later notice this and tear down that cell. Cells that stem from younger larvae do smell better and they are allowed to progress further. So capped cells is what you want to look for later. Do remove all but one. No need to find each and every cell in a split. Same with natural swarm cells, for your production it is sufficient to remove all but one that you can see. This way the hive never swarms to death and makes a decent crop.


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## lamarcarama (May 3, 2015)

Thanks BernhardHeuvel! This is perfect info. I did a 1-box (each) split. So my split is definitely not too big. I will leave the bees to deal with the culling themselves once a new queen is born and mated.


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