# Queen cups capped early then they expected?!



## Rishi (Apr 5, 2021)

Hey guys I'm rishi. I had started beekeeping this Feb and I'm new to this and learning everything by my own every day.today I got a new question and I didn't found answer to it in the internet🤧.my question is:- on 3rd April 2021 I had given brood to my queen less hive by using alley method,and today on 5th April I went to that hive for inspection and found 7 queen cups.couple of cups were capped before they are expected to cap and they are perfectly good in size and totally developed.if everything goes well they have to be capped on next Saturday may be on 9th or 10th but why they are capped early. Do queen bee emerge from them.please help me🥺


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

You can have queen cells capped after 3 days if they use older larvae, but after 2 days is a stretch. Could you be looking at drone cells, are your dates definately right, and do you have a photo?


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## Rishi (Apr 5, 2021)

Oldtimer said:


> You can have queen cells capped after 3 days if they use older larvae, but after 2 days is a stretch. Could you be looking at drone cells, are your dates definately right, and do you have a photo?


Yes my dates are right, I have maintaining a diary and noting each and every point that I did to my hive. The eggs given to it which are 1day old when I was given. here are the photos:


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

The alley method. You transferred the comb with eggs into your queenless hive on 3APR and had capped cells on 5APR. What day did you introduce the comb into the queen right hive to allow the queen to lay in it before making the transfer to the queenless hive?


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## Vance G (Jan 6, 2011)

The bees started making queens on a larvae from an egg layed 3 1/2 days previous. 4 1/2 days later the larvae is capped if I have not slipped further into senility. This is I believe how you start your time clock on when the new queen will emerge. Consider culling some of the smaller of the seven cells. I would leave one for a new queen and two more in close proximity for insurance. No use wearing out the new winning virgin having to slaughter a whole army of rivals.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

That is a queen cell, but it is tiny and I don't think the queen from it will be much good. If you have some larger queen cells and especially if they took longer to be capped, keep those and squish the small ones.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Unless you have the true age of the larvae other things can creep in and confuse the issue. Placement on the frame and subsequent temperature can make older larvae on lower parts of the frame appear as younger than their biological age. The amount fed to them may also have been less. Contrary to expectations, the nurse bees tend to feed better the ones already well fed and further neglect the smaller and older. Link below shows data supporting that the quantity of feed is more determinant of superior qeen characteristics than the richness of the feed. After the third day (from the egg) even larvae fed pure royal jelly will be incrementally inter castes with shifts toward fully worker after day five as the cutoff.

Left to their own devices the workers will start to cull started cells right up to emergence. You can have a fully functioning queen that may fill the bill but will be of lesser laying potential than a queen developed from the youngest larvae in a colony swimming in resources and nurse bee numbers. She could run out of semen or eggs and her max rate of lay will not be as high. She might do well under most conditions we subject her too, but not be a super bee.

Many of the standard queen rearing practices prevent the nurse bees from choosing the youngest larvae; some people will pick 48 hr old larvae because they are easier to graft and it is common to cage capped queen cells which prevents nurse bees from tearing down some of them. We might also inadvertently choose one of those older larvae that appear the age of one we think we are choosing. Emergency queens from splits will fill the bill in most situations but dont bet the farm against someones queens who is milking every angle that makes even a slight nudge towards ultimate queen performance.









Experimentally induced variation in the physical reproductive potential and mating success in honey bee queens - Insectes Sociaux


In honeybee colonies, reproduction is monopolized by the queen while her daughter workers are facultatively sterile. Caste determination is a consequence of environmental conditions during development, during which female larvae may become either queens or workers depending on their larval diet...




link.springer.com


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## Rishi (Apr 5, 2021)

Oldtimer said:


> That is a queen cell, but it is tiny and I don't think the queen from it will be much good. If you have some larger queen cells and especially if they took longer to be capped, keep those and squish the small ones.


Found queen coming from cap today here are the pics of Virgin queen. But it was pale in colour. I don't know by looking that the queen is healthy or not. Is it a good queen🥺? But it's really a shocking thing that queen came in 10days.(6days less than expected).


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

It looks OK to me Rishi. The way to assess them is by the size of the thorax not the abdomen. The thorax is fixed in size and you can see it is bigger than the workers thorax, if it was the same or smaller you have a poorly raised queen. 

The size of the abdomen is not critical in assessing virgins because when they first emerge it is swollen, then they trim down in preparation for their mating flight and can actually get surprisingly small, then soon as they are mated they start swelling up.

Yes 10 days is the normal time for the first virgin to emerge in a queenless hive. That's because from the day the egg is laid until the mature queen hatches from the cell is 16 days. But the egg hatches on the fourth day, then is still viable for the bees to turn into a queen for another day or two. So 10 days you will normally have the first virgin hatch. Which is why some beekeepers cull the worst cells, they may hatch first and kill better ones that were raised from younger larvae.


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