# Small Queen Cells



## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

I had a batch of dinks last year I almost threw out.
I went ahead and hatched them out anyway.









How the heck can such a large virgin be in those cells? LOL



















I've had very large cells with a few average virgins in them too. You can't tell by the way the look for the most part. Depends on how they are fed while in development.


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## Steves1967 (May 16, 2012)

Lauri, thanks so much for all the sharing you do!


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

I have decided over time that I don't rate queens on cell or virgin size anymore. I go ahead and put them in nucs. If I don't have enough nucs, I do put larger cells in by themselves and put a couple of small ones together to fight it out. But I've had great queens that I wasn't too sure about based on the look of the cells or their size.


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## matt1954 (Sep 8, 2010)

Lauri, do you routinely mark your virgins? I thought doing so may affect their ability to mate.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

As soon as they hatch. I have a great mated return average. I even marked a few with disks to see if they had problems with that monkey on their back. 100% return on the few I did mark that way. That was pushing it though, I'm sure. 
I can handle the queens with my bare hands without the other bees bugging me.




















I've just been using the marker from Mann Lake. It's more pink than red, but shows up well in the hive.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

Okay, great. I'll set them up in mating nucs and see how they roll.

Thanks to all,

Adam


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

I've also found that most smaller queens do come from smaller cells, but that isn't always the case, and neither do all larger queens come from larger cells.

However, I have tracked several very small queens through to their being mated and laying, and found it difficult to find obvious fault with their performances. Perhaps they won't last as long as a larger queen, but at that time I didn't have the resources to make that kind of determination.

Bottom line: large cells = large queens, only most of the time. It's a whole other question; are larger queens inherently better than smaller queens? Perhaps our human intervention, selecting for larger queens since we've been breeding them. Have our breeding efforts artificially enlarging them from how they would be without our intervention?


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## Ben Franklin (May 3, 2011)

Could you explain what a mateing nuc is and what you do to set it up,,,details.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

It's just a queenless nuc. It can be very small (just a couple hundred bees) as it's just to support the queen until she is mated. The more bees that you have in your mating nuc, the better you can judge her performance because the amount of brood that they can raise will be determined by the number of bees and not the queen. So I use 3-5 frame nucs. The 5 frame nucs normally have a frame feeder so, depending on the type, I can get 3-4 frames in the box. My 3 frame nucs use a quart jar on the lid.

I put a frame of open brood and bees and shake in another frame of bees to start the nuc. I try to put some foundation or something not fully drawn because for some reason mating nucs seem to want to make comb. They fill the feeders with comb, add it to the walls and generally make it difficult to remove frames. So the foundation gives them something to do.


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## rbees (Jun 25, 2012)

If there's a small cell but with a good amount of royal jelly left in the base after it pupates, then IMO the larvae has had all the food it could eat and that will be a quality queen. if the cell is small and zero royal jelly left....then I will cull it.


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## Lauri (Feb 1, 2012)

For those that don't know what the royal jelly should look like in the cell, two cells in the center have the JZBZ still full. Cell to the right, the JZBZ appears to be empty. You can see light through it. This could just be a reflection from my camera, but you get the idea:









Heres a cell at about 48 hours. You need a good starter hive and must feed them well to get a start like this:



















A tiny bit of a protein patty still on top. Thes bees are packed but getting old. After this current batch, they'll need freshening. This hive will do a great job of starting and finishing.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Certainly better fed queens are better queens, but size isn't everything:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3398436/


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

In all things queen cell I prefer uniformity and look with suspicion at anything smaller or larger than the mean. I tear apart hundreds of cells each year that I am suspicious of. The bad ones are almost always the large ones rarely will a small one be bad.


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## brad5155 (Jan 30, 2019)

I just did an OTS split and notched a few frames. Came back to find only 2 cells in the whole lot of bees. Was pretty disappointed as it was two boxes and i notched 5 or 6 frames. The queen cells are not all that pretty either. Was not sure what to do about them. But the colony is packed and full of resources so i’m Just going to roll with it and we’ll see how it goes


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Brad, I find it hard to believe that in one hive you had 5-6 frames of eggs to notch. You know that there must already be an egg in the cell?


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## brad5155 (Jan 30, 2019)

JWPalmer said:


> Brad, I find it hard to believe that in one hive you had 5-6 frames of eggs to notch. You know that there must already be an egg in the cell?


Well, i’m Not sure why its hard for you to believe maybe you can elaborate as to why that’s hard for you to believe??? And, technically, you don’t notch eggs. You would notch new larvae just hatched. The same stuff you’d graft. So yes, i’m Aware you’d need something for them to make a queen with.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

6 divided by 2 = 3

Stuff happens, sometimes not.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Sorry, did not mean for my comment to come across thet way it did. When I do OTS, it is usually on just one frame of eggs, not larvae. It takes a while for the bees to decide to build queen cells and by then the once day old larvae are too old. Just my take on it. Hope your cells do well.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

JWPalmer said:


> <Snip> When I do OTS, it is usually on just one frame of eggs, not larvae. It takes a while for the bees to decide to build queen cells and by then the once day old larvae are too old. Just my take on it. Hope your cells do well.


I tried notching below young larvae on one of my snelgrove division board splits and the bees patched up my notches and drew cells in other places. It sounds plausible that the time delay while they make up their minds might indeed make those larvae older than they prefer. This summer I will try notching under some eggs instead and see what they think of that!


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## brad5155 (Jan 30, 2019)

JWPalmer said:


> Sorry, did not mean for my comment to come across thet way it did. When I do OTS, it is usually on just one frame of eggs, not larvae. It takes a while for the bees to decide to build queen cells and by then the once day old larvae are too old. Just my take on it. Hope your cells do well.


No worries man. I appreciate you verifying that I have a sense about what i’m Doing. I guess a lot of folks don’t and you don’t know me from a hill of beans so prob better to ask. With that being said, thanks for the well wishes. You’re idea of notching eggs is worth a shot so i might just give that a try next time. Thanks for the input


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