# queen cups in split



## Bee Havin (Mar 1, 2017)

I would stop feeding. They are most likely backfilling most of the available room for your new queen and are thinking she may not be up to par. Bees do however continually make queen cups and tear them down. I would just go ahead and remove them if you are sure you have a laying queen. You will sleep better.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

What Bee Haven said. Stop feeding. You have flow and they can find their own pollen. Also 1:1 is the correct Spring ratio. Sounds like you are getting honeybound. Add another deep right away or you risk swarming.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Yes, if you appear to have a laying queen tear down the started cells. My bees will start cells during extended periods of nothing coming in. Occasionally I have found where the flow resumed and they tore them down themselves. You just have to make sure you are NOT interfering with an essential emergency or supercedure. Take into account the existing queens age and previous performance record.


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## clan deboye (Aug 17, 2016)

thanks for the replies. They essentially emptied the feeder before I could get back into the hives. The bees tore down all but one cup which now has a larvae in it and is close to being capped. The 3 splits taken later (may 14th) are doing much better than the one from may 4th. Nice brood patterns and little to no drone comb. The one on the 4th has an erratic brood pattern and a surprisingly large number of capped drone cells. The one queen cell left is in the middle of the frame and does not look like the emergency cells they formed when I took the other splits with the hook pattern, 
This split is too small to survive a swarm I think, but if they do I have 2 empty nucs set out with 3 frames of iffy comb from a friend who had a hive destroyed and all the brood eaten. They also have 2 frames of undrawn foundation and have been baited with lemon grass oil and installed aprx. 15' up facing South aprx. 50 yds from the location with my 2 hives and the 4 splits. Have to keep the swarm traps on my own property and using the line fence trees makes sense to me.
I am going to leave them to it and let them do what they want with that split. If they want to supersede I am going to let them. If I lose it then at least they will have drawn out some comb for next year.


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