# Help - My Queen Cells Were Torn Open



## Boglehead (Feb 16, 2009)

I recently made my first attempt at queen rearing. After grafting ~12 cups and placing in a queenless medium box packed with bees above a closed cloake board and qr colony below, I saw 4-5 cell started 3 days after grafting. The cloake board was then removed and the hive was reunited. Today, anticipating capped qc's day 10 post-grafting, I found only cell ripped open from the sides with no cells remaining. Burr comb was present between the bars filled with eggs.

should I have kept a queen excluder in place under this box? I don't believe a new virgin destroyed the cells as these bees were "queenless" for only 24 hours before the grafts were introduced. Should I have protected the cells in any other way? I have read of placing tinfoil around the base of the queen cells early on in some references.

Please help. What could I have done differently to help avoid this outcome?

Thanks in advance


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Yes, you should have left the queen excluder in place. Queen cells in a queen-rite hive get torn down, that is, if it does not cause them to swarm.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

I think your definition of a cloake bord and mine are two different things. A cloake board is a queen excluder bound in a frame with a slot to close off with a piece of tin. all you do is pull the tin and leave the excluder part on the hive to keep the queen from going up there. Sounds like you just threw on a piece of plywood or something between the boxes?


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I am using an aluminum foil instead of the tin plate for my cloak board over
an excluder. About 90% of the bees got brushed off into the bottom box. And then
put my grafted cells in. Some will drift back to the top box where the queen is at but
that is fine. They can still share the heat during the cold nights here. Hopefully this
will work to give me some good cells 4 days later. Fingers crossed!


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

bee pro, your queen goes in the bottom box, the benefit of using an actual cloake board is it provides a second entrance. You spin the bottom box around lay down your cloake board with the entrance facing the normal direction then you shake the bees off a frame of pollen and open nectar and open brood and place them above with the cloake board in the open position, then wait a few hrs for nurse bees to move up then you close it off. ALl the returning forragers who leave out the back will return to the top and it packs it full of bees. At this point you can either leave the frame of open brood for them to raise cells ( if it had appropriate aged larva) or you can pull the frame of brood and insert a graft bar. After 24 to 48 hrs check to see if cells are started and if they are you pull the tin and reunite into a queen rite finisher making sure the excluder portion of the cloake board remains in place. Having the queen on top makes for a lot of unnecessary manipulations to get to the brood below.


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## Boglehead (Feb 16, 2009)

Thanks for your help.

I constructed a cloake board in a typical fashion. I didn't realize the cloake board remained in place after grafting throughout the development of the qc's. I simply removed the cloake board day 3 post-graft after confirming qc's were being built and turned the hive around again with normal entrance on bottom board.

Is it the queen in qr colony that destroys these cells or workers? If workers, how does a queen excluder prevent this from happening? 

My queen was around these new developing qc's (evidenced by eggs in burr comb between bars). I presume roller cages can't be used to prevent this as workers couldn't get at the cells for development or feeding. Is tin foil around base of cell fact or fiction?

Thanks in advance.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Laying queens seldom kill queen cells. I would suspect a queen cell was already started that you didn't see before you put your cells in.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

My opinion is workers will tear down cells in the presence of a decent queen. If you have a hive with cells, and introduce a laying queen, they'll typically get torn down if they're not capped yet, but I can't say who does it.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

HC, it is a time issue. I just made up the cell builder/finisher
on the same day about half hour before the grafted cells. The reason to put the grafted cells at the bottom and not in the top hive is to allow the foragers to bring in more resources into the hive. I don't use a top or middle entrance either and don't want to interrupt the bee traffic that much. So I moved all the capped frames and about to hatch frames into the bottom box and put the cells into it. There are only minimal amount of old developing larvae on these frames that I moved down. Actually this method is quite easy to do. The top box is not too heavy to move after the bees got brushed off into the bottom box. 

How does an excluder prevent the tear down of the cells? 
I am not exactly sure. After the queen is excluded her scent is
above/below these q-cells. Without her smell then the nurse bees
will draw out the queen cells. Once you removed the tin then her scent will be all over the hive. I believe it was the older bees not the young nurse bees that tore up these cells after they were united. They don't want another queen because they are happy with the current one. And they don't want to swarm either. At least not at the moment. 
On day 3 after you saw the drawn cells you united the hive. The cloak board direction said to unite them on the 4th day after they draw up the cells. So I think you are one day early. I will wait after the 5th day to unite them with the excluder on. Let's see if they will keep these cells or not.
An excluder will allow the young nurse bees to be in the same hive with the grafted cells using HC's method. My method dumped everything together to focus on the grafted cells only. Not much young/developing larvae for the bees to feed and no chance of a rogue virgin queen later on. I will check to be sure on the 5th day for any cell made. This is an ever improving little experiment here and learning along the way too.


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