# How to respond to finding queen cells????



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

How many cells? Only two? That sounds like a supersedure, not a swarm. Is the hive crowded with bees? Swarm cells are usually on the bottom and there are usually a lot of them. Sometimes dozens. Certainly several. A hive is usually packed with bees before they decide to swarm.


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## NeilV (Nov 18, 2006)

Michael, 

Right after I posted, it occurred to me that this might be a supersedure not a swarm, so I edited. You responded during my edit. Sorry about that.

From your post, I take it that you think this is a supersedure, not a swarm situation. If that's really the case, should I just wait and see what happens?

Thanks again,

ndvan


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

The bees are telling you what to do.

a) Old queen is laying well, so she can continue to head up a colony.

b) Swarm (or supercedure) cells can be moved to a split, leaving the
queen that is laying well to lay for another spring.

If the attempt to make a spilt fails, the bees will drift back to the
queenright hive, and any bees that remain can be recombined with
the original colony.

Checkerboarding is not a sure-fire way to avoid swarming. 
There is no sure-fire way to avoid or stop swarming.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

I would go ahead and remove the queen and set up a nuc with a couple frames of open and sealed brood, stores, and plenty of young bees. Either way they go in the mother hive you'll be ahead of the game. 

If they were planning to swarm, you probably will stop it from happening. If it was supercedure, they will go forward as planned. When the new queen is laying and all is well, you can always pinch the old queen and combine the bees and brood frames back into the original colony. The old queen will have been laying eggs all along in the nuc and the colony will not have missed a beat. Or keep the old queen going and start a new colony if you need to expand.


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

ndvans questions:
1)Why is there one (and only one) swarm cell and one that looks more like a supersedure cell? 

2)Do you agree with the plan of taking the old queen out to make a split? If not, what do you suggest?

3)Have you ever had luck keeping them from swarming by repeatedly cutting out the queen cells, or do they just end up swarming anyway? Even if that could work, is that a bad idea given that this could be a supersedure?

4)Would I be better off to stick a new, purchased queen in the old hive to keep them from waiting to make the new queen?

tecumseh replies:
1) you probable created this when you checkerboarded (there is a risk to checkerboarding which some folks seem to have not recognized????)... I am guessing here, but did you do this just before a cool snap? if the 'swarm cells' are about the same age this is likely also a response to the same manipulation... they are preceived by you as swarm cells but may simple represent where the properly aged larve were located to the bees in the box.

2) you can remove queen and leave cells for split(s). it is almost always a good idea to move one set or the other of the splits. since the cells are of undetermined age and these are quite fragile up until they get fairly close to emerging, I usually think that moving the existing queen is the most prudent alternative.

3) cutting cells will at least keep them from swarming tomorrow... the day after is another question. if these cells have been created as I speculated they were above, then yes cutting cells will keep them from swarming. If the hive had decide upon superscedure then the only risk you are taking is if there is no eggs or very young larvae in the box.... if the queen is failing and they do have resources in the box they should simple create another queen cell.

4) I would not. I would likely cut cells and see what happens or split. If I desired to make increase (over making some crop or building this particular unit up fairly quickly) I would split using the exisiting cells. If I did split... I would feed ALL these units and boost with a bit of brood from time to time (one frame added about every 10 days to two weeks) until they have grown to adequate size.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I thought my efforts to stop swarming (checkerboarding mediums) had worked.

Checkerboarding is a manipulation done above the brood nest, and in your location would probably be done about Februrary and in no way involves the brood nest. I'm afraid it is unclear what you mean by this. Do you mean putting empty frames IN the brood nest or arranging the combs OVER the brood nest (ala Walt Wright)?

If it is putting empty frames (or empty combs or foundation) in the brood nest, you never want to put any more in that they can fill the spaces with festooning bees. Otherwise they will not be able to maintain the brood nest warmth.

>Why is there one (and only one) swarm cell and one that looks more like a supersedure cell?

Probably because it's a supersedure cell.

>Do you agree with the plan of taking the old queen out to make a split? If not, what do you suggest?

It has the advantage that you can still recover if the queen does fail by putting that queen back in the hive and if the queen does NOT fail you have a spare queen. But it is more work and it is possible they know something about the queen that you do not.

>Have you ever had luck keeping them from swarming by repeatedly cutting out the queen cells, or do they just end up swarming anyway?

I have never had any luck cutting out swarm cells to keep them from swarming. But then I don't think yours are trying to swarm.

> Even if that could work, is that a bad idea given that this could be a supersedure?

Exactly.

>Would I be better off to stick a new, purchased queen in the old hive to keep them from waiting to make the new queen?

Why not let them decide? Odds are they will figure out this queen is doing fine and tear down the cell anyway, or they don't believe she is, in which case they will replace her.


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## NeilV (Nov 18, 2006)

To clarify things, I think I better explain my checkerboarding method. Basically, I read Walt's book and then did my best to adapt it to what I had on hand (all mediums and not enough comb). I did that manipulation back in late February. 

I moved the cluster, which was pretty small at that point (Russian bees) from the middle box to the lower box (all mediums). Then, in the top two boxes (also mediums), I pretty much alternated a drawn empty frame with a drawn frame of stored honey. I don't have a drawn frame stockpile, so I had to use what was already in the boxes. They had not emptied enough to really do every other frame. I actually had about four frames of honey just above the brood nest. So, when I finished back in Feb., it looked roughly like this:

Top: e/f/e/f/e/f/e/f/e/f/

Middle: f/e/f/f/f/f/e/f/e/f

bottom:f/f/f/b/b/b/f/f/f/f

(e is empty comb, f is honey or what little pollen there was and b is brood).

They ate up the honey in the middle box when brood rearing started, and now there is brood in the bottom box and the center of the middle box. They are storing some honey in the top medium, but there's not that much going on in that box. It is still some empty comb and some with honey. There is no solid band of honey in the hive, which according to Walt Wright, is the trigger for a hive to conclude that its safe to swarm.

Like I said, it seemed like this hive hit a snag a couple of weeks ago. It was roughly doubling in size every 3 weeks and then it paused for no reason I can figure out. Where the queen has laid, the brood pattern looks pretty good, but it's like she took a week or two off from laying. Now she's laying fine again. I tried feeding sugar water, but they quit taking it and it got moldy, so I stopped.

Generally speaking, it seems like most people seem to think that this looks/smells/feels like a supersedure not a swarm. Just to make sure I follow you, are you saying that:

1. When they are swarming, they make lots of queen cells, not two; and

2. Although supersedure cells usually are on the face of the comb, that ain't necessarily so?

I have heard that Russians build and tear down swarm cells, but I did not think the queen laid in them if they did not mean business and I never heard that they build and tear out supersedure cells. Is that right/wrong?

Now that I think about it, I remember in Walt's book that he said his hives regularly requeen themselves after the "reproductive swarm cut-off" date. Maybe that's what's happening here. 

I'm thining that maybe it makes sense to wait and watch what happens before automatically splitting this hive. If they build more cells that look like swarm cells, then I'll split. However, the worst that happens is they swarm, and that's not the end of the world either.

Thanks for all of the help on this. I really appreciate all of your comments.

ndvan


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

you ask:
1. When they are swarming, they make lots of queen cells, not two; and

2. Although supersedure cells usually are on the face of the comb, that ain't necessarily so?


tecumseh replies:
1) sometimes yes, sometimes no. the size of the hive is important and then some hives will produce only a limited number of queen cells no matter what the size. available resources (including feed) also can alter how many cells a hive will produce.

there is also the case (which is unusual but not rare) where a hive seem incapable to begin building queen cells.

2) exactly. in superscedure or emergency queen cell generation often times this simple represent where the essential resources were located at that critical juncture in time.

you writes:
I moved the cluster

tecumseh fills in a blank???
and then proceeded to move about all the remaining frames in the hive? can you be absolutely certain that in all this shuffling about, that there was not 'an egg' on one of those frames that you shuffled away from the main cluster?

add a cool snap that moves the cluster away from that egg (which is now a larvae) and presto you have a superscedure that has been induced by the bee keeper. although I don't checkerboard I have inadvertantly done the same in a full depth box. at one time it would leave me scratching my head wondering what was going on....


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## NeilV (Nov 18, 2006)

Tecumseh,

Thanks for that clarification about swarm vs. supercedure cells. 

So basically: (1) my hive could be about to swarm; (2) it could be that they are superseding (which probably means that the queen is failing but might not mean that); (3) it could mean that a some of the bees decided that they would builed a few queen cells as a late April fool's joke. I can either wait-and-see or split. If I do not split and they intend to swarm, I'll lose a swarm. If I split, I might get a bad split due to having a bad queen in the split and could weaken the original hive with nothing to show for it. However, with a split, I do have a chance of having at least a decent nuc out of the deal. 

Is that about the size of it? 

On the checkerboarding procedure, I did that back in February. If I recall correctly, the queen was not laying yet back then. I really did not move the "brood area" because there was no brood yet. I really just moved the cluster. A little later in early March, the queen started laying in the bottom box. 

In case there are any newbees reading this for the info about checkerboarding, I don't want to get anyone confused, so I'll add this:

1. Contact Walt Wrights son-in-law to get his book or look for the articles section on Beesource to read more about the subject. What I described above is not really what Walt does. He configures his hives with a bottom box that is a shallow super pollen box. A deep on top of that. Then he puts a shallow on top of the deep. When he checkerboards he adds another shallow to the top. He puts alternating frames of honey and drawn foundation in both of the shallows on the top of the hive. The idea is to trick the bees into thinking that they do not have a solid mass of honey stored above the brood nest. According to Walt, that tricks the bees into thinking that the hive that would be left behind would have insufficient stores if there were a swarm and overrides the swarm instinct until the time of year for a reproductive swarm has passed.

2. You DO NOT checkerboard to prevent swarming after you already realized they are about to swarm. Once they have decided to swarm it is way too late. Checkerboarding then would create a mess of the hive and not do anything to stop a swarm. You checkerboard early in the year, a couple of months before the bees would start considering swarming under normal circumstances.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Bees sometimes take a lull in buildup because of a variety of things. If they are backfilling the brood nest, then I would assume they are preparing to swarm. But if they are not, then they may just be making up their mind what they are going to do now. Walt says there is a lull right at reproductive cut off where they are making up their mind to swarm or not. I can't say I've even tried to observe this, but it makes some sense. Bees often hesitate when making up their collective mind. There could also be a lull in the flow. You could also have a failing queen (which might explain the queen cells). Sometimes a queen does great right up until she fails.


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

ndvan writes:
Is that about the size of it? 

tecumseh writes:
sometime there are no good choice, just some better than others. 

I do believe that you mentors strategy would have been the simplist and most clear cut. after you had the old queen in a new box (I would then assume you would move this box) if that unit didn't try to superscede then at least you would know that the problem was not with that queen.

you would also have (maybe) two of her offsprings (if you seperated the two cells)... which might be good if you were attempting to make increase. 

this early in the season (for you) a half filled box of bees is quite unlikely to swarm.


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## Walts-son-in-law (Mar 26, 2005)

From Walt,

Checkerboarded hives normally supercede after repro cutoff. Less than 6 cells is typically supercedure, no matter where they are located. Read "Supercedure" article in POV on this site. In my area supercedure cells typically are located on the bottom bars. Supercedure on the face of the comb is a misrepresentation from old literature. It sometimes happens, but is not the norm. In my opinion, ndvan's situation is supercedure, pure and simple.

Walt


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## sierrabees (Jul 7, 2006)

I don't see any connection between what you did in Feb. and what is happening in May. It sounds like the checkerboarding did it's job and you may be seeing the results of a brief period of low pollen availability and decreased brood rearing. The weather where I am at has been so wierd this spring that everything started flowering, then we had about two or three weeks of extreme cold that retarded the bloom for a while, now we are back to the seasonal normal and everything is blooming at once. The bees respond to the availability of pollen and nector and this type of weather will cause some of them to go off schedule. I think the wisest course of action is to do as you mentioned. Put the queen in a nuc for a while and give them a chance to raise a supercedure queen. If the new queen is good then you have a hive with a young queen. If the old queen is also good you can build up a strong hive for next year with a little feeding. If either queen fails you haven't lost anything. If both queens do well and you are concerned about loss of honey production, just rob brood from the nuc to keep the old hive strong until the new queen is producing. Depending on when your main honey flow starts, taking the queen out now could actually improve your honey crop since the remaining bees won't have young brood to feed until the new queen gets up to par.


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## yoyo (Jun 13, 2007)

Tecumseh please explain the following comment. 

tecumseh fills in a blank???
and then proceeded to move about all the remaining frames in the hive? can you be absolutely certain that in all this shuffling about, that there was not 'an egg' on one of those frames that you shuffled away from the main cluster?

*add a cool snap that moves the cluster away from that egg (which is now a larvae) and presto you have a superscedure that has been induced by the *bee keeper. although I don't checkerboard I have inadvertantly done the same in a full depth box. at one time it would leave me scratching my head wondering what was going on....


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## tecumseh (Apr 26, 2005)

yoyo ask:
please explain the following comment. 
add a cool snap that moves the cluster away from that egg (which is now a larvae) and presto you have a superscedure that has been induced by the

tecumseh replies:
a spring cluster will expand and shrink as the weather warms or cools. placing larvae outside the primary cluster runs the risk (when the temperature plunges) to strand brood bees and larvae outside the primary cluster. with no queen in these secondary groups of bees (which are usually quite small), these bees can think the are queenless and begin rearing queen cells (also usually small in number and most commonly just one).

any number of manipulative practices could induce this problem. a solid frame of pollen with a few eggs unseen on one side is how I have generally made this error when I shuffled the frame to the outside of the bottom box to 'expand' the brood area (always in early spring). splitting boxs of brood early in the spring with a box of pure foundation or even a queen excluder can lead to the same result (you normally have a greater number of bees and cells in this case). I would suspect??? you could generate the same problem by simply roatating an upper box (with some bees and larvae) 180 degrees when the primary cluster in the bottom box is not centered in the box.

lastly.. all cells that are started are not necessarily finished and all cells that are finished do not necessarily hatch. 

I do hope that helps my prior muddled explanation.


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## NeilV (Nov 18, 2006)

*update on this crazy hive*

On my next inspection after I last posted, I found two things. First, the bees had torn down the queen cells on their own. So they were not swarming or superseding after all.

Second, there were patches of dying/dead brood (maybe that is why they stopped the queen cells, don't know). I was really concerned about that and had a mentor take a look. The open brood was dead but not ropy or smelly. He thought that it was probably a case of EFB. He said that he has had similar problems in rainy weather and said that the bees probably would take care of it on their own or I could use antibiotics. So I left them alone. I have since discussed this with another local beek, and he also said this happens occassionally in his hives during our spring rains, due to either EFB or chalkbrood.

Yesterday, I opened the hive back up. Except for maybe 10-15 cells, they had cleaned out the dead brood and filled it back in with brood and open cells of honey. There was no new brood that was dead. Most of the brood area is now in the bottom box. The honey storage part looked like back-filling the brood nest with honey. Also, there was a single capped cell that looked like a swarm cell. 

I still don't know what this hive is up to. Maybe they are going to swarm/supersede. Or maybe they just filled up the hive with honey because a batch of brood died and there were too many foragers and not enough house bees for a couple of weeks. 

At this point, I'm getting inclined to requeen it just to try to stop the madness. If nothing else, this is the queen's second year, they are inclined to build queen cells and this hive is weird and has little interest/ability to build up where it would make a decent honey crop.

If I requeen it and they were planning on swarming, will they swarm anyway? If I requeen, should I also open things up by putting some frames of foundation above the brood nest and moving those frames to another hive?

Thanks, 

ndvan


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>If I requeen it and they were planning on swarming, will they swarm anyway?

No. But they weren't planning on swarming anyway, or they wouldn't have torn down the cells.

> If I requeen, should I also open things up by putting some frames of foundation above the brood nest and moving those frames to another hive?

If it's not that crowded, and not getting backfilled, I wouldn't bother. But if I were to take them somewhere I'd move them up a box.


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## Dale Hodges (Jul 13, 2007)

I've noticed that an unblanced hive often leads to supersedure. Anytime you move a lot of frames around or maybe make a split,the queen gets blamed for the "unblanceness" If I see a good laying queen about to get replaced by something I did , I usually remove the cells. If I like the Queen I usually put her in a nuc. The location of queen cells is a good indicator, but its not a hard rule.


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## Cold Bees (May 18, 2007)

*Hive Balance*



Dale Hodges said:


> I've noticed that an unblanced hive often leads to supersedure. Anytime you move a lot of frames around or maybe make a split,the queen gets blamed for the "unblanceness" If I see a good laying queen about to get replaced by something I did , I usually remove the cells. If I like the Queen I usually put her in a nuc. The location of queen cells is a good indicator, but its not a hard rule.


Wow,

Glad this came up. I was just perusing The Hive and The Honey Bee last night and somewhere it discussed supercedure cells appearing in recently hived packages on previously drawn out comb, or maybe a recently requeened colony with lots of drawn comb, but they have grown older waiting for a queen to lay, as examples of hive balance problems. 

The suggestion is that the fresh young queen, rarin' to lay eggs, meets up with a great place to lay lots of eggs, and the 3 pounds of package bees, all not that young by this point, can't 'keep up with her', so they end up being stretched thin working lots and lots of broods, etc. I was wondering if this is considered current gospel in beekeeping?


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