# Delayed or dud queen?



## frustrateddrone (Jan 31, 2015)

I believe it was Michael Palmer who wrote that just because you see a capped queen cell does not mean it's got a queen in it.


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## leavesofjoy (May 28, 2015)

frustrateddrone said:


> I believe it was Michael Palmer who wrote that just because you see a capped queen cell does not mean it's got a queen in it.


That's an interesting point, might apply here. But, I did see larvae in several other queen cells that we looked at when we did the split. And, on these two, they started out light wax coloured and now, it looks like something brown is inside, I can see the darker tint in the thinner window-looking areas of the cell. I could be interpreting that wrong, though.

-MN


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

If it's 10 days from the day they were capped, they are duds.


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## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm

8 days until it's capped 8 more days until it emerges.


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## leavesofjoy (May 28, 2015)

It's definitely 10 for the one that was capped late on the day of the split, and more for the one that was already capped then. I wasn't sure if the "bee math" in my books varied at all on this, but it sounds like they are duds.

-MN


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## leavesofjoy (May 28, 2015)

*Re: Delayed or dud queen?/Update & question*

So today I finally had time to go into the small split colony with the unhatched queen cells. They are really dwindling, not many bees in there, and I think the problems I saw today are from that, but some "expert eyes" would be appreciated.

The queen cells had larvae in them, so they never developed further than that:








I also saw 8-10 cells with workers partly emerged, just the heads or part of them, but dead otherwise, like this:








The bee with her tongue sticking out is the dead one; here she is fished out of the cell. She is totally formed, just seems to have died while emerging.








Here is another one, with the cell cap open and the dead bee inside:








This is an overall picture of a comb:








Looking online at some old threads from beemaster, I think what happened is that the brood that I moved over in these combs mostly emerged, but as there is no queen and the colony started to dwindle, there are not enough bees to care for the last emerging ones, and so they've died. I don't see any evidence of disease that I recognize from books, but I could be wrong.

What I'm wondering is if this seems like just some attrition (vs. disease) and if it seems safe to try to recombine this colony back into the one I split it from, and to redistribute the comb back to other hives. The split accomplished my goal of preventing swarming from the original hive, so I'm not too disappointed, but I don't want to waste these remaining bees and comb, unless it's a possible infection vector.

Thanks for your thoughts on this, anyone!
-MN


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## fruitveggirl (Mar 8, 2013)

frustrateddrone said:


> I believe it was Michael Palmer who wrote that just because you see a capped queen cell does not mean it's got a queen in it.


That's really interesting. I'd never heard of that before. Could you elaborate on why this might happen? What is inside? A dead larvae? Nothing? Something else? This is fascinating! Thanks!


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