# Made a split, massive number of queen cups a few days later.



## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

So I found a hive with either a swarm cell or a supercedure cell about a week ago. It was a young larva and I only saw one cup with larva in it, despite several empty cups without eggs in them. So as soon as I saw it I found the queen and split her off into her own hive with three frames of various aged larva (a couple frames mostly capped). Shook some extra bees in and called it good. 

For my own curiosity I went back into the mother hive to see if there were any cells starting on the cups that I couldn't really see into. There weren't. What there was were several more queen cells started along the bottom edges of frames where I believe there were just eggs when I originally made the split. So I ended up splitting them off again making two nucs with two frames of brood one capped one open, a frame of honey. One of those frames had a couple of queen cells on it in each nuc. So the original hive now had the original queen cell close to being capped, and maybe another cell or two that had larva in them. 

There were probably close to 100 new queen cups all the way up and down the edges of frames with nothing in them. Is this because I made them suddenly queenless? They always have some level of cups in the hive, several, and I always look and they don't have anything in them (until they do, right?). But man once they lost their queen they went into cup building overdrive. The new cells they actually started that contained larva I believe were "emergency cells" they just happened to be started in the most convenient spot which also happened to have the youngest larva because of how the queen was laying.

Original queen was still laying away with no cups started in her hive. One thing I did notice was it looked like the queen right split was evicting drones. Is this an indication of them deciding they won't be swarming now? Are the massive number of empty cups started a response to sudden queenlessness?


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

You got it, I would imagine that hive is also crammed full of young house bees. They tend to overreact like that in their zeal.


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## rwlaw (May 4, 2009)

Ya, sometimes they'll make em and cap em with nothing but air inside. I pull queens to make splits before they get swarmy, it seems to cut down on the dud cells.
If you give the queenright hive plenty of room they'll be fine, unless the bees really want to give her the boot, which is unusual.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

rwlaw said:


> Ya, sometimes they'll make em and cap em with nothing but air inside. I pull queens to make splits before they get swarmy, it seems to cut down on the dud cells.
> If you give the queenright hive plenty of room they'll be fine, unless the bees really want to give her the boot, which is unusual.


My first (and failed) attempt at grafting had a cell capped with nothing but air. It was odd because there was nothing at all in that cup when they capped the others, so they built it after they'd capped "real" queen cells.


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