# inducing supersedure



## bentonkb (May 24, 2016)

Can you manipulate the hive in a way that will induce supersedure? I know you can induce queen rearing using the emergency queen response, that's easy. If the time of year is right you can also induce swarm queen rearing. That's a little harder because it isn't entirely under our control, but still possible. Seems like inducing supersedure would be very tricky. You would have to keep the queen in the hive, but reduce the amount of queen pheromone that the workers can sense.

The reason I'm asking is that I have been adding empty frames to the brood nest in my backyard hives to prevent swarming and I think I added a few too many in one hive. One of the frames had a single, empty queen cell right in the middle of a frame. It didn't look like an emergency cell that is made from a reworked worker cell. It looked like they purpose-built a queen cell from scratch. I'm thinking that I split up the broodnest too much and the bees in the back part of the hive (this is a long lang) weren't getting enough pheromones from the queen so they started preparations to supersede her.

The situation has resolved itself in the past two weeks, but I'm still curious if it is possible to deliberately start a supercedure.


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

bentonkb said:


> Can you manipulate the hive in a way that will induce supersedure? I know you can induce queen rearing using the emergency queen response, that's easy. If the time of year is right you can also induce swarm queen rearing. That's a little harder because it isn't entirely under our control, but still possible. Seems like inducing supersedure would be very tricky. You would have to keep the queen in the hive, but reduce the amount of queen pheromone that the workers can sense.
> 
> The reason I'm asking is that I have been adding empty frames to the brood nest in my backyard hives to prevent swarming and I think I added a few too many in one hive. One of the frames had a single, empty queen cell right in the middle of a frame. It didn't look like an emergency cell that is made from a reworked worker cell. It looked like they purpose-built a queen cell from scratch. I'm thinking that I split up the broodnest too much and the bees in the back part of the hive (this is a long lang) weren't getting enough pheromones from the queen so they started preparations to supersede her.
> 
> The situation has resolved itself in the past two weeks, but I'm still curious if it is possible to deliberately start a supercedure.


You can look in most hives and find empty queen cups someplace. Nothing to be concerned about at all.

Can you induce supersedure? Sure. Things like cutting off a leg or two from the queen or over trimming her wings on one side will often induce supersedure.


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## Bob Anderson (Jun 13, 2014)

I believe that if you isolate the queen in the bottom box of a large hive with a queen excluder and then after maybe a week put a frame of eggs and larvae up into a higher section of the hive the bees will build out queen cells on that frame.


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

Causing an imbalance in population can stimulate supercedure also.


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## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Try cutting off an antenna. That'll do it. &#55357;&#56885;


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

OK, so Bob Anderson's method does it without damaging the mother queen, causing constant supercedure that will eventually result in the bees killing her.

I do the same thing, only using 3 boxes - the top one gets the open brood, the excluder goes between the queen in the bottom box and the second box. The longer separation distance is probably what causes it to work so well.

The problem under supercedure response is that they only start a very few queen cells, usually only one, and those each come on different days. Setting up swarming impulse, removing queen cells, then tripping it with emergency response causes a good number of queen cells to be built. So, supercedure response is a good strategy for making only a few queens.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

bentonkb said:


> Can you manipulate the hive in a way that will induce supersedure?


i've been thinking about this a lot lately and for the very same reason.

it's not unusual for me to see a couple of supercedures during our spring brood up, which accounts for about 10% of my hives.

this year i'm seeing supercedure in over 50% of my hives.

i believe one reason for this is that we haven't had drones here since last july because of a recording setting drought last year, so this is the first opportunity for supercedure since then.

but another reason may be that i have been more aggressive with opening up the broodnests this spring and making the nest areas larger than what the queens are able to keep up with.

i've wondered if not being able to keep up with filling the nest with eggs is a clue to the workers that the queen needs superceding.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Squarepeg - Are the supercedure colonies mostly your weaker colonies? If so, I'd think that poor mating due to few drones during last year's drought is the culprit. I'd buy queens if I could afford them in order to take full advantage of this year's excellent nectar flow.

If making the nest area larger involves adding more than 1 comb to 6-frame or smaller brood nest, then that is the problem. At about 7 frames of bees, you can place in an undrawn frame between 2 open brood frames and draw it out, but only one at a time. Stronger colonies won't mind, and obligingly draw your frame out for you by the next day. Weaker colonies will supercede the queen.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

kc, i'm seeing supercedure in colonies ranging in size from the smallest to the biggest. the earliest one failed to get mated and started laying drones so it got pinched and received a cell from one of the others, and yes, this one is going to miss the flow.

the later ones are superceding fairly seamlessly with a ton of capped brood and even some eggs and open brood still present at the capping of the supercedure cells. these will do fine honey production wise, and what is even better is that they are unlikely to swarm. i think i'm going to be pleased in the end, i'll just have to make sure the new queens aren't lost to mating.

i remember walt explaining, (and i can't remember if it was during personal conversation or in one of his articles), that he saw a lot of supercedure with his checkerboarding. his feeling was that manipulating to create a huge broodnest that spanned several boxes pushed the queens in such a way as to cause supercedure. in fact, he quit inspecting during the build up due to the damage it was causing to those cells. i messed up a few myself in this way.

my opening up the nest was done with drawn medium frames, averaging opening up the nest with between 3 - 5 frames every two weeks or so, and pyramiding a frame of brood up to the next box when appropriate.

in the end, the some of nests occupied the middle five frames of four 10 frame supers (spaced out to 9) and some were in the middle of three supers and the top half of the bottom deep, giving the space equivalent of 10 - 12 deep frames or so.

i've been meaning to hit the books and see what the conventional wisdom is about the queen not keeping the nest full of eggs as a stimulus for supercedure, just haven't had the time yet.


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## bentonkb (May 24, 2016)

kilocharlie said:


> OK, so Bob Anderson's method does it without damaging the mother queen, causing constant supercedure that will eventually result in the bees killing her.
> 
> I do the same thing, only using 3 boxes - the top one gets the open brood, the excluder goes between the queen in the bottom box and the second box. The longer separation distance is probably what causes it to work so well.
> 
> The problem under supercedure response is that they only start a very few queen cells, usually only one, and those each come on different days. Setting up swarming impulse, removing queen cells, then tripping it with emergency response causes a good number of queen cells to be built. So, supercedure response is a good strategy for making only a few queens.


KC,

Who is Bob Anderson and what is his method?


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Having a long box hive, this may work for you, give it a try...

Put the queen and sealed brood frames in the back, opposite the entrance. Put the eggs and open larva frames in the front, at the entrance (I would put one single frame of open nectar/pollen at the very front, to give cushion between the open larva/eggs and front entrance). Put the honey and pollen frames in the middle, between both ends. This will separate the queen from the youngest eggs and larva by the maximum amount of space in your longbox. The foraging and nectar handling and feeding of larva will be in the front (only sealed brood and queen at the rear), so the only bees going to the back will be those needed for the queen herself and to keep sealed brood warm. This may greatly slow the distribution of the queens pheromones to the front of the hive where they may then build you out some queen cells. This would be done in a superceder type situation where the queen's pheromones are not strong enough in the front of the hive where the youngest eggs and larva are.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

You can definitely induce a SS in standard lang hives by vertically splitting the brood nest, as in putting a super with brood, above a new super of drawn comb. I put a super of drawn comb last under what I thought was a super full of nectar but it apparently had a small patch of on the center frame and they pulled a SS cell.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Benton - Bob Anderson's post is #3 on this thread, near the top of page 1. He suggests keeping the queen under a queen excluder and moving open brood into another box above the queen excluder. This often causes a supercedure cell to be built. I do this with the open brood in a 3rd or even 4th box - far away from the queen, and they build a supercedure cell almost every time. One other person mentioned creating a population imbalance, 2 other people mentioned damaging the queen to induce supercedure - but why? Bob's idea works fine.

Squarepeg - looks like you have a grip on it. You and I both probably have stuff yet to learn about handling frames gently. I think your suspicion about more handling than usual is probably the main influence. I'll look up old threads about supercedure vs hive manipulation as well. Good work. :thumbsup:


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

kilocharlie said:


> Benton - Bob Anderson's post is #3 on this thread, near the top of page 1. He suggests keeping the queen under a queen excluder and moving open brood into another box above the queen excluder. This often causes a supercedure cell to be built. I do this with the open brood in a 3rd or even 4th box - far away from the queen, and they build a supercedure cell almost every time. One other person mentioned creating a population imbalance, 2 other people mentioned damaging the queen to induce supercedure - but why? Bob's idea works fine.
> 
> Squarepeg - looks like you have a grip on it. You and I both probably have stuff yet to learn about handling frames gently. I think your suspicion about more handling than usual is probably the main influence. I'll look up old threads about supercedure vs hive manipulation as well. Good work. :thumbsup:


And how is this not creating an imbalance in population? The manipulation you are doing is doing exactly that.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

bentonkb said:


> Can you manipulate the hive in a way that will induce supersedure?


Supersedure is induced by placing a queen excluder between boxes in a strong hive. In the queenless part it takes 3 days for all the eggs to hatch, after that there are no eggs any more. In this point bees start to think there might be something wrong with the queen. They are induced in supersedure mode. They get some queen substance though the excluder but it is not enough for them to feel comfortable.

All the young nurce bees in the queenless part of the hive are in optimal condition to feed started queen cells, or to even start cells. How well will they start their own cells depends on their natural cell building instincts. If the instinct are strong enough this is the easiest queen rearing system. Give them no more than 10-15 cells/larvae in one time. If they don´t start the unstarted larvae, choose another hive. They might be better cell builders.


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Slow Drone said:


> And how is this not creating an imbalance in population? The manipulation you are doing is doing exactly that.


Sorry, Slow Drone, I guess I didn't interpret your wording as that. Perhaps we were indeed saying exactly the same thing. Juhani gives the details of the mechanics of it. I do think it is a better way to induce supercedure than injuring the queen mother, unless you want a continual supercedure effort until she is replaced with a satisfactory queen.


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## nediver (May 26, 2013)

Demaree with top entrance. Virgin will mate. Kill queen u want to supercede and fold hives together after flow.


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

kilocharlie said:


> Sorry, Slow Drone, I guess I didn't interpret your wording as that. Perhaps we were indeed saying exactly the same thing. Juhani gives the details of the mechanics of it. I do think it is a better way to induce supercedure than injuring the queen mother, unless you want a continual supercedure effort until she is replaced with a satisfactory queen.


Yes I think it's the best way to go also very very nice queens are produced this way without damaging a queen. :thumbsup:


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

Enjoyed the discussion.

I get supercedure as more natural, but I am not sure it is all that superior to emergency. In a natural supercedure, though induced may be significantly different than natural, the cell is often on a rather out of the way frame and not all that heavily attended when I see them.

Could also be called a stretch split or other names. Certainly is a less disruptive split to population age than a walk away. I see it as less resource committing and less successful as well. Quality is more about the hive strength than the method. Curious what you all see.


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