# Queen Cells being torn down in finisher



## gmeadevt (Mar 7, 2012)

So I've tried my hand at grafting this year after raising queens last year using the Miller method. After a couple of underwhelming grafting attempts I usually can get 85% acceptance on my grafts now. I use a "swarm" box for 24 hours then move the cells to a finisher colony that is queenright. The queen is below the excluder and I occasionally move a couple of frames of open brood above the exluder and the capped brood back below the excluder. The finishing colony is a strong double deep hive. They always seem to do a great job growing and capping the cells the swarm box started. However 2-4 days after capping they start tearing down the queen cells. I've started protecting them after they are capped, but was wondering if anyone else routinely experiences this, or am I doing something wrong? I've also noticed that the finisher colony will routinely build queen cells on the frames of uncapped brood that I've placed adjacent to the developing queen cells. I'm thinking next year I'm going to invest in a temp controller and make an incubator.


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## olympic (Aug 20, 2006)

Your problem is coumaphos contamination in your combs. Coumaphos is the active ingredient in checkmite+.


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## gmeadevt (Mar 7, 2012)

I've never used checkmite and these are newly drawn combs this year.


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## WilliamsHoneyBees (Feb 17, 2010)

Sometimes I have the same problem. I don't worry about it and just graft 25% more then what I think I will need. I have found that certain finishers tear down more cells then others, feeding the finishers helps a lot, and that adding a surplus amount of bees to get them to swarming levels helps to. Lots of bees produce lots of big cells. I have also been splitting my rounds of cells between finishers. If I need 30 cells I will put 15 in each finisher cutting the work load in half and also not "putting all my eggs in one basket" Sorry, don't have a more definite answer for you as to why they do it, but I like to think the bees know better then we do and I let them be the master selectors of which cells are culled and which ones will produce good queens. Good luck!


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

I have had the problem too with queen right finishers. I think that I have now gone back to just using queenless starter/finishers. The strange part is the bees waiting until they are all capped before they tear them down. The irritating part is counting cells the day they are capped so that I know how many nucs I need and then finding way less cells on moving day. I only raise a couple of batches a year, so queenless finishers work okay. I can just use the bees in my mating nucs.


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## Velbert (Mar 19, 2006)

if you have not kept a close eye for EM queen cell and one has hatched above the excluder but cant get out to mate this could be the problem when the cells are being built they are no threat to her as they age some then they will tear them down seen this in a starter finisher had a stray EM Cell hatch that i had missed tearing off.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

Velbert,

Yes, that is a possibility in some of the cases. The last time I had the problem, I put the excluder between the boxes and 3-4 days later checked for cells before adding my own larva. They had started 2 or 3 cells above the excluder. I removed them (and also the whole frame that they were on) leaving the nurse bees and added my frame of larva. I was using a Cloake Board and closed it for a day. They started 16 cells and capped them. They were all torn down when I went to get them to put them in mating nucs.inch: 

Another time the bottom box decided to supersede the queen. The upper box tore down half of the cells. I didn't know about the supersedure queen until I took the boxes a part and found the empty queen cells and a marked queen was missing in the bottom box.


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## Giorgio (Mar 26, 2010)

gmeadevt said:


> I've never used checkmite and these are newly drawn combs this year.


when you buy your foundation, there might be some resuidue of any chemical that was in the wax the last guy sold the bee supply co.. then they make foundation out of it.. I have had bees in the past work around foundation because they did not want to draw it out... beeswax will store chemicals a long long time.....maybe FOREVER


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Anything is possible, but I've seen the ame thing in queenright finishers and i've only ever used enough wax foundation to decide I don't favor it. And i've never used any hard chemical treatments. So that leaves the wax coating on plastic as a remotely possible source. 

Any theories as to why coumaphos contamination doesn't cause queenless finishers to do this? I'm inclined to think it is more to do with the queenright state of the finisher. But then again what do I know.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

Switch to a queenless finisher and you will be fine! Congratulations, 85% take is fantastic! my eyes are still crappy and about 70 is a good week for me!


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## olympic (Aug 20, 2006)

I think it is safe to say that most of the wax foundation in use has some coumaphos contamination.


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## adamf (Jan 28, 2006)

Giorgio said:


> when you buy your foundation, there might be some resuidue of any chemical that was in the wax the last guy sold the bee supply co.. then they make foundation out of it.. I have had bees in the past work around foundation because they did not want to draw it out... beeswax will store chemicals a long long time.....maybe FOREVER


Assuming that residual chemicals in the wax are causing this problem, why then does it show up sporadically? Also, as previoulsy cited, why does Jay Smith in his writing, cover this problem, when pesticides were in their infancy and certainly not in beeswax?

Adding nurse bees and keeping the colony "swarmy" works very well to get a cell building colony "back in the mood".

Adam Finkelstein
www.vpqueenbees.com


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

Giorgio said:


> when you buy your foundation, there might be some resuidue of any chemical that was in the wax the last guy sold the bee supply co.. then they make foundation out of it.. I have had bees in the past work around foundation because they did not want to draw it out... beeswax will store chemicals a long long time.....maybe FOREVER


While this might have some implications in beekeeping, in the case of raising queen cells on a cell bar all of the wax is completely new. There might be some contaminated wax somewhere in the hive, but on the cell bar there won't be. Also, most of the time cells don't seem to be torn down even in a queen right finisher, but they are enough of the time to irritate me and make be decide to probably to back to a queenless finisher.


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## gmeadevt (Mar 7, 2012)

I think I'm going to start using a nursery bar like the one Honey Run Apiaries sell: http://www.honeyrunapiaries.com/store/nursery-frame-p-242.html

I know it takes an extra step of handling the cells but when your only grafting every 14 days it really sucks to loose a fairly large number after they've been capped....


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

Re: I was using a Cloake Board and closed it for a day.
They started 16 cells and capped them. They were all torn down when I went to get them to put them in mating nucs.
I had 10 Cloake boards in production near my nuc yards. Mr Cloake was right in that they will adopt a virgin queen as stated in his directions on how to use his method. He stated that the boards should not be located were virgin queens could enter them.
I quit using the boards because there is to much manipulation involved and went back to using queen right or queen less starter finishers.
Good luck,


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

Ernie,

Would a Cloake board be more susceptible to this than a queen right finisher with an excluder between the boxes? I understand the extra manipulation, but the Cloake lets me use the same hive as the starter and queen right finisher. Most of the time I've had good luck, but then there are those frustrating times. I haven't been raising queens long enough to have a good handle on what works best for me and (most importantly) why, yet.


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## BEES4U (Oct 10, 2007)

beedeeteee.
Answer: yes.

THE CLOAKE-BOARD
http://www.honeybeesuite.com/using-the-cloake-board-method-to-raise-queens/comment-page-1/

Please note that manipulation of the board at 4.1 opens the hive to the acceptance of a virgin queen in the cell building area. If a virgin queen attempts to enter a queen right cell builder she will be killed.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

Ernie,

Good point. I hadn't thought about the easy access to the upper box.


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## olympic (Aug 20, 2006)

Coumaphos affects the development of the queen larva/pupa and produces individuals that are intercastes. This was named Intercaste Syndrome. These intercastes enter queen rearing hives and destroy the cells or are present and the bees destroy all or some of the cells. The intercastes are often very hard to detect due them having a variable percentage of queen/worker characteristics. In addition to this the nurse bees can probably detect that something is amiss with the cells containing intercastes and cull them. The development can be affected even at levels under 100ppm.


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