# Moving swarm cells to start split



## dulley (Apr 20, 2009)

I have several hives and one very strong one has several swarm cells on each of three frames. They all are capped, but one has already opened. I planned to move one of the frames with swarm cells and extra bees to each of two new hives. I was wondering since a new queen must have already emerged from the one opened swarm cell, would she have destroyed the remaining swarm cells in a way that would be noticeable? Does the first-to-emerge swarm queen just sting the others through their cells so the closed cells look okay to me, but the queens inside them are killed. I don't want to move bees and swarm cells to new hives if the queens inside them may have been killed by the first queen.


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## NewbeeInNH (Jul 10, 2012)

My impression was the new queen will tear a hole in the sides of the queen cells to kill the queens.

http://honeybee.drawwing.org/book/queen-cell-destruction


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## sakhoney (Apr 3, 2016)

Newbee is correct - if the cell side is intact - the queens inside are OK


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