# Queen cells



## ekervina (May 18, 2009)

We inspected our hives yesterday, one has decided to supersede their queen.

View into a queen cell.

Almost a view into a queen cell, except she's being tended to.


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## natureboy (Jun 8, 2010)

thats a swarm cell. they want to split.


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## WV Bee Guy (May 10, 2011)

I've got the same thing, about 5-6 of them around the middle of the frames in a newly installed package (about 1-2 weeks old). Is that because they were in "swarm mode" when packaged? Is there anything to worry about, the queen seems to be laying fine.


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## ekervina (May 18, 2009)

I doubt that is a swarm cell. 
The whole story isn't clear from the picture, but that particular hive is pretty weak, low population. It's two mediums, with about five frames of drawn brood comb the queen hasn't layed in, a few she has layed in, a few of honey, and four frames they've barely started to draw. They've had that space since they were put in the hive two weeks ago. If anything, we could have removed a box.


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## ekervina (May 18, 2009)

WV Bee Guy said:


> I've got the same thing, about 5-6 of them around the middle of the frames in a newly installed package (about 1-2 weeks old). Is that because they were in "swarm mode" when packaged? Is there anything to worry about, the queen seems to be laying fine.


I recently attended a presentation by Michael Palmer where he stated that packages seem to be superseding their queens much more often than they did historically. 

At a guess - and this is just a guess, I'm not very experienced and don't know the particular situation of your bees - I'd lean toward they just want their own queen, for whatever reason bees have. I'm pretty sure that's the case in my hive, since they have had more space than they know what to do with since they came out of the package. 

Also - this part is specuulation also - it seems to me that a package of bees wouldn't be particularly inclined to swarm since they are shook from a number of hives. I imagine that jumbles up any conclusion they might have reached, and being dumped into a new hive should make them feel like they have already swarmed - after all, isn't that essentially the strategy for a swarm prevention split? Take the queen and a bunch of the bees and move them to a new hive?

I could be way off, I still have a lot to learn, but my guess is my bees just don't like the queen I've given them, and yours don't think all that much more of your offering.


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## winevines (Apr 7, 2007)

Sounds about right E. Sorry to hear this, but you still have time to build up that hive is she is replaced this month. I got some packages this year just to rebuild brood up from dead outs. I had planned to requeen them all this summer. One of the two superceded the queen pretty quickly. Funny thing was that a mated queen came with the package. The queen in the cage wound up dead, and then I looked and of course there was a mated queen laying away, lots of brood (I installed on all drawn comb). One week later- queen cells. So at least the new queen who is now finally laying is half Virginian! You will be better off hopefully with a newly made queen as well. When did you install this package?


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## ekervina (May 18, 2009)

winevines said:


> Sorry to hear this, but you still have time to build up that hive is she is replaced this month.


We're not too worried. We have a strong hive, and a strong nuc, so if this weak hive fails we can transfer the nuc into it. I'm also hoping to split out some bees into nucs later for overwintering. We have a good amount of honey left from this winter's dead-outs, so that'll be a big help as well. Far from being discouraged, I've become convinced that the key to getting good survival rates is more colonies, so any loss is a smaller percentage. 

I don't know if you caught the tale, but we had two packages, one had a dead queen. We got a replacement that evening, but most of the bees went over to the other hive, so the next day we got a third package, dumped half the bees in the hive and put the other half and that package's queen into a nuc.

The caged replacement queen and original bees went into the hive on the 28th of April and the additional bees went in on the 29th. When we check on May 4th she had been released and was laying. Yesterday there was good brood, but none capped, so there is still a bit before we expect to see emerging brood. Our other hive is a few days ahead (hived on the 28th, direct released the queen), so once that one starts to build up we'll likely transfer some brood frames to bolster the weak hive's population.


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