# Supercedure cell?



## Tom B (May 11, 2011)

Bees will sometimes build these even with a good queen. If supercedure where occurring in earnest, there would be multiple queen cells.


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## NirvanaFan (Apr 17, 2012)

I looked through 16 or so frames, and this was the only one I saw. I'll let them do their thing even if they want to supercede her. 

Thanks for the reply.


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## erwkkkk08 (Mar 13, 2010)

That is a queen cell and your bees will swarm unless you take preventitive measures, i.e., give them more room or split. There does not have to be multiple cells and placement of these cells on frames (top, middle, bottom), is only given as a guideline by books and other beeks. In reality the bees will put them wherever they find a suitable egg or larvae under 3 days old. As stated before that is a capped queen cell which means you will have a new queen in your hive soon and the old queen is gonna jet with half your girls, guaranteed.


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## wcubed (Aug 24, 2008)

Both the above responses seem to be quite positive to both be incorrect. It is a supersedure cell. One cell for SS is not uncommon. Risky, but many do it that way. One cell is invariably for SS and also does not imply swarm intent. You are fine, without any action on your part except checking for brood in about 3 weeks. According to my records, SS is reliably implemented about 95% of the time. Just to be sure they get it right, check back after the sequence times out.

Tuned in tonight to open a thread on this very subject. Beginners are not told that 1st year colonies AUTOMATICALLY supersede in the first season. We have had so many threads on the subect with poor advice that I thought it time to make the point.

Walt


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## RAK (May 2, 2010)

Yes its a supercedure cell.


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## Seymore (May 1, 2009)

Walt, if you posted on this, Could you please note link - would love to read it. I was told first year beeks NEVER get a swarm. Guess what I got??? Yup, they swarmed!


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## erwkkkk08 (Mar 13, 2010)

Nirvanafan,
You say your bees are doing great and that there is is a tight brood pattern every time you check? Bees do not supercede a strong laying queen unless there is something wrong with her genetics, if your bees are not showing any signs of genetic weakness then the queen is strong. Unfortunately, if you ask 10 different beekeepers the same question, you are likely to get 11 different answers (some of them very opinionated). Most people think like people instead of thinking like bees, with this art experience is the best teacher. My family has kept bees for 3 generations now, and I have seen all sorts of things people say wouldn't happen that did. That is a swarm cell and your bees are trying to populate asexually. I don't consider myself an expert and I don't respond to posts hardly ever, but your name garnered my attention. Good luck with your bees, wish you the best.
Eric


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## NirvanaFan (Apr 17, 2012)

She does have a strong laying pattern. The picture below shows the brood pattern from when I installed the nuc. The pattern is the same now though. They shouldn't be swarming because they have plenty of space. They still have 5 or 6 frames to draw out in the second deep.

Maybe I will check out of work an hour or two early sometime this week to check up on them again.


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## honeyman46408 (Feb 14, 2003)

Seymore said:


> Walt, I was told first year beeks NEVER get a swarm. Guess what I got??? Yup, they swarmed!


Oh yes they will, remember that nothing is writen in stone with bees, I have had hives swarm with 6 frames or less covered with bees.


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## psfred (Jul 16, 2011)

Check for eggs and very young larvae in areas where the bees have recently emerged. If they are going to swarm, those cells will be filled with nectar instead of fresh eggs because the queen is no longer laying. 

If there are normal number of eggs and very young larvae, I'd put my money on supersedure rather than swaming.

Peter


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## erwkkkk08 (Mar 13, 2010)

Nirvanafan,
Space or no space, you can't supress 50 million years of instinctual behaviour. I have had hives that are 2 deep, checkerboarded frames in the bottom deep and only 6 drawn frames in the second deep and the hive still swarmed, twice. You have a primary (prime) swarm and may have up to 2 or 3 secondary swarms. If it can happen, it will. Remember, populating an area whether sexually or asexually is the second strongest drive in all animals, right behind self preservation. If there is enough brood to equal the amount of bees leaving with the old queen, they are game. The chances of the wokers off-ing a good queen are slim. Time will tell. Good luck again.
Eric


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## NirvanaFan (Apr 17, 2012)

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'll check on them in a couple days and see what I find. I would rather them not swarm, but they'll do their thing.


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## JYawn (Dec 6, 2011)

so unfortunately I can't view this picture at the moment.... Is this queen cell capped already?

If it isn't already capped then just pull the frame and have a look inside the cell.... is there an egg? Is there larva in the cell? Is it empty?

I had a queen cup show up on one of my combs in a top bar hive early last week and I assumed it would be used for either swarm or SS. However, there it sits on the side of the comb completely empty and alone while the current queen continues laying eggs.

If it isn't capped off I would definitely check it before jumping to any conclusion. From my understanding a supercedure results in a few queen cells being made all at once.... swarming usually causes many queen cells to be produced over a little span of time.


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## mrobinson (Jan 20, 2012)

I agree with the thought of "50 million years of instinctual behavior." _Every_ hive is different. We can observe, and we can speculate based on what we and other human beings have observed, but we can't say why this hive has built that cell, nor what this hive will do with it. We have learned that bees do supersede their queen. We have observed the behavior enough times to know that sometimes certain subsequent behaviors (like swarming) occur frequently and consistently enough that we say that there is "correlation." But "correlation" is not "causation," and this is never an exact science. When something is definitely afoot, you will most commonly see _several_ correlated indicators at the same time.

I frankly like to see both drone cells and queen cells, and I don't intervene in either case. If for other reasons I want to split a hive, naturally I will look for the presence of queen cells to identify the hive, and certain frames or bars within that hive, as a good split-candidate. But I don't presume that I know "why" the bees did this or that, and I don't try to "stop" them or to destroy what they have done.


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## RAK (May 2, 2010)

erwkkkk08 said:


> That is a queen cell and your bees will swarm unless you take preventitive measures, i.e., give them more room or split. There does not have to be multiple cells and placement of these cells on frames (top, middle, bottom), is only given as a guideline by books and other beeks. In reality the bees will put them wherever they find a suitable egg or larvae under 3 days old. As stated before that is a capped queen cell which means you will have a new queen in your hive soon and the old queen is gonna jet with half your girls, guaranteed.


I disagree... The bees do NOT make swarm cells out of any suitable available egg or larvae under three days old. Instead the queen lays into queen cups when given the signal by the bees. same with supercedure. Find a hive with a drone laying queen and give them a frame of eggs. They will never make any supercedure cells out of it even if they are doomed.

The bees will only make queens out of a normal worker cells if it is an emergency. Also normally in good weather a swarm will live as soon as the cells get capped. If a swarm has not yet left to this day, the bees are not ready to swarm but are superceding the queen. I have never seen a hive with one swarm cell. A large hive could make 20+ and even nucs make 4+ cells. At minimum I've seen a nuc make 2 cells.


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## MattDavey (Dec 16, 2011)

This is where an "Experience Indicator" would be useful in deciding who's advice to take.

My vote is with Walt Wright - Supersedure.

Matthew Davey


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## erwkkkk08 (Mar 13, 2010)

Rak,
That may be your experience, but when it comes to bees, there are no absolutes. Period. I have been keeping bees for multiple decades now and have seen many things happen in one season that I've never seen again. When taking advice about beekeeping it needs to be with a grain of salt. I did not reply to this post to have people give ME direction about beekeeping, I replied in order to give Nivanafan my opinion, I know enough about beekeeping, mereley offering my advice. There are things that are relatively predictable about beekeeping and some things that aren't. Bees WILL make queen cells out any egg or larvae young enough, they don't inform the queen they plan to supercede her. Nirvanafan stated that the bees are strong and with no signs of genetic defects signifying a good queen, as written in an earlier post, bees will NOT supercede a good queen, there are exceptions of course. If you go by the inclination that bees will only manufacture a queen cell from a queen cup, then look at the placement of the cell (bottom third of the frame), and THAT particular queen cell was clearly made from a typical worker cell, it is flush with all cells surrounding it implying that it did not start out as a queen cup. Granted everything I write should be treated as secondhand information and it should be known everyone develops their own style of beekeeping, in that same vein, my Dad used to tell me opinions are like rear ends, everyone has one and most of them stink, including our own. We get enough static in everyday life, we don't need more on a forum, the man asked for advice, I gave him some, did not need responses to my response in return. As I've written before, time will tell.
Eric


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## Intheswamp (Jul 5, 2011)

erwkkkk08 said:


> Rak,
> <snip> Granted everything I write should be treated as secondhand information and it should be known everyone develops their own style of beekeeping, in that same vein, my Dad used to tell me opinions are like rear ends, everyone has one and most of them stink, including our own. We get enough static in everyday life, we don't need more on a forum, the man asked for advice, I gave him some, did not need responses to my response in return. As I've written before, time will tell.
> Eric


 A respectful but differing response within the confines of a forum thread appear to me to be what is called "discussion". I thought that forum threads were designed for "discussion". If not I'm thoroughly confused (my wife will not argue that last point!).









My opinion (if ya got one ya might as well show it, eh?  ) is that the cell is a supersedure cell. Single cell, coming off side of comb somewhat low down but not at the very bottom (but definitely within swarm-cell territory), uncrowded conditions, plenty of resources for numerous swarm cells (but there's only one), and ???. I think Eric pegged it with his "time will tell" phrase...we'll see. 

Keep us posted Nf.

Ed


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## abejorro (May 9, 2011)

So, what would be the suggested action, given each scenario? 
Remove the cell?
Split hive?
Ignore?


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## oklabizznessman (Oct 24, 2011)

I just thought this frame looked funny?

Is this cell pointing up or down?

Just looking it appears current queen has a very poor pattern. (not able to tell without seeing more)
Anyone that told someone a new hive won't swarm in the first year is nuts. I've had package bees pull one deep box and three mediums and swarm in 68 days and it wasn't one of those dinky swarms. The girls know best let them take care of it.


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## Intheswamp (Jul 5, 2011)

The frame is being held vertically. 

Ed


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## RAK (May 2, 2010)

erwkkkk08 said:


> Bees WILL make queen cells out any egg or larvae young enough, they don't inform the queen they plan to supercede her...As I've written before, time will tell.
> Eric


Science shows us that supercedure and swarm cells are from an egg laid in a natural queen cup while emergency queens are made of any suitable larvae. If you think your experience is really superior then good for you. I do not want to boast or anything but I am the fourth Generation beekeeper. Just because a queen has mated well does not mean she is a good queen. She could have been raised from older larvae. There are a million reasons why they would supercede and we just do not know them. I had MANY queens superceded with great patterns.

I do not want to offend anyone and not trying to set off any arguments... I just want new beekeepers to be informed that it is indeed a supercedure cell.


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## wcubed (Aug 24, 2008)

This thread has generated considerable disagreement, and I suppose I started it. Note that I take no pleasure in haggling over details. I agree with erwkkkk08 that the cell looks more like an emergency cell than one built on a preexisting cup, but there is conflicting data. Where is the adjacent capped worker brood? In the E cell scenerio, where a worker egg/new hatch is selected to rear a replacement queen, there would normally be surrounding capped worker brood. Developement time of workers is a little longer than queen developement time. The cell actually looks like an egg was placed in an empty cell outside the brood nest specifically to rear a queen. Strange, no?

Larry Conner has a relevant article in this months Bee Culture. He describes a supersedure cell as an emergency cell. And goes on to say that supersedure is associated with weak or failing colonies, and that's why the cells are normally located up on the face of the comb in the interior of the broodnest. That's not what I see, but then I also don't see weak and failing colonies.

Walt


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## tommyt (Aug 7, 2010)

RAK said:


> .
> 
> I do not want to offend anyone and not trying to set off any arguments... I just want new beekeepers to be informed that it is indeed a supercedure cell.


I fully agree


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## NirvanaFan (Apr 17, 2012)

A quick update for this thread. I inspected my hives again this past weekend. I didn't see that supercedure cell when I checked all the frames. I did see eggs again, so I know a queen is (or was recently) around somewhere. This hive seems to be a little behind my other hive. Not a lot, but just a little. The other hive had a few more bees, but not a lot more, so I don't think the bees swarmed. I think the other hive is just going a bit faster. 

The consensus was that this was a supercedure cell, so I didn't do anything with it. The bees know what they are doing. Obviously I don't want them to swarm, but if they're just superceding, then I'll let them.

I plan on going back and doing a quick inspection Saturday. Maybe I'll take a whole bunch of pictures so I can go through them afterwards. 

Thanks for the help everyone. Your help is appreciated.


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## MarkBee (Apr 16, 2012)

This is really interesting. I had a similar experience with a single capped queen cell on the bottom of one of my frames. New hive from a package, great brood pattern very productive Carniolan queen, but didn't see her and didn't look for eggs as closely as I should have, so a few days later I decided to go back into the hive and confirm egss for sure, in the mean time I moved one of outside frames near the brood that wasn't drawn out on the outside side, in one position. When I went in a few days later, I found eggs, didn't find the queen, but that moved frame was completely drawn and full of eggs. The capped queen cell was gone. There was not enough time for the queen to emerge so those eggs have to be from my original queen. I had been feeding 1:1 sugar water and when I found the queen cell, I was thinking that even though I had undrawn frames in the bottom super they were away from the brood and that because the capped brood had not started hatching yet, the hive reached the point where is was becoming honey/syrup bound. So I stopped feeding as well. I go back in this weekend and update this post. The bees are bringing in lots of pollen and nectar and the hive seems calm. Mark


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## Gypsi (Mar 27, 2011)

I'm going with Walt's opinion. The bees will do as they please. I did note a single queen cell near the center of a deep frame in my hive that I moved to its new stand yesterday. And yesterday, my neighbor said he had bees near where I'd kept a hive all summer (recently moved it). I'd collected lost workers for a couple of days, so I just gave him a swarm trap. Took a look over there this morning, a few bees in the box but a carpet on it and a clump hanging under the stand. I hived them. Reckon that single queen cell was the superseding queen for the one that left with the swarm. They clearly have a queen, all filed in when I put the clump in the box....

Gypsi


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