# Quality of "Emergency Cells"



## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

I think it will depend on a few things, like, if there's a nectar and pollen flow on at the time, the strength of the hive, the nurse bee population in the hive, etc.

Swarm cells are usually made with the most optimal conditions and are usually very well fed, and are built in places on the frame such that the quality of the emerged virgins are consistently better than the quality of emergency queen cells. That does not mean that emergency cells can not be had that are of great quality, it's just that they have a higher rate of less than great quality as compared to swarm cells. Swarm cells are planned, emergency cells are not, and that can make a difference in the quality of emerged queens.


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

Grafted queens are raised by stimulating the emergency impulse so I don't understand why people say that it doesn't make much sense to me. I usually hear that from someone who sells queens.


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## m0dem (May 14, 2016)

Slow Drone said:


> I usually hear that from someone who sells queens.


lol, yeah, that's what I was thinking!
It might be some hype made by queen breaders who want you to buy their queens.


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## m0dem (May 14, 2016)

RayMarler said:


> Swarm cells are usually made with the most optimal conditions


True enough. But doesn't the Miller method (and grafting) essentially use the bee's emergency "instinct?"


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

m0dem said:


> True enough. But doesn't the Miller method (and grafting) essentially use the bee's emergency "instinct?"


It does.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

The difference with one of the contrived emergency simulations is that it can be made easier for the workers to break down cell walls to start moving the larvae and feed into the vertical. This can be done by providing tender new comb, notching or cutting off comb at the transition boundary from egg to just hatched.

I have many cells started in 6 different colonies forced by a division board . I have examined the cross sections of cells I have culled and there is quite a difference in the visual exposed length compared to a purpose built swarm cell, but in all cases there seemed to be royal jelly pushing the larvae. That is the question; did the larvae at any time suffer for the want of the proper and adequate diet? An excess of food after the larvae quits feeding or even upon emergence, is a sign of just that; there was an excess of food. Is more than adequate any better than adequate in real measureable performance of the resulting queen or is it agenda driven. 

Are emergency cell queens really statistically more likely to be "caste queens"?


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

Yes tender new comb is the key without question. I use only new comb with only eggs either 24 or 48 hours old I never use larvae has worked well for me. In the past I've used larvae of grafting age and still had gotten excellent queens better than store bought but my personal preference are eggs. I get a runt once in a great while but I'd had more when I grafted not exactly sure why other than the possibility larvae had been minutely marred when grafted. My personal preference is to raise queens without grafting to eliminate the unsteady or unreliable manual dexterity. Have extremely low queen issues supercedure is not common outside of a queen into her third season or my causing an imbalance in population. As far as the stats on caste queens my guess would be it depends where the stats are coming from someone honest or someone with a hidden agenda.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Maybe e-queens don't have 100% of the same potential as some others - maybe they do under some conditions. It's probably nearly impossible to measure by examining only the finished queen. I don't know.

But what I find regretfull about this recurring meme is if it keeps anyone from making increase because e-queens produced by splitting MIGHT be sub par. 

I'll tell you this - I'll take an e-queen raised by splitting any time over any queen that was caged as soon as she lays 2 square inches of eggs, and then mailed across the country. 

I suspect the question is a case of splitting hairs at best.


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/emergencycells.html


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

At this point a few scientific papers tracking long term performance would be useful. Making sure bees are well fed are perhaps more important than grafting vs emergency. In cases of supercedure, another bee planned scenario, I've seen cells in older comb, so perhaps they are able to adapt without significantly affecting larval nutrition. 

Like frank, I've been raising some queens using division boards. My observations this year is that the queens produced are robust, often larger than their commercial/swarm cell origin mothers.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

A queen cell is a queen cell and they all take exactly the same thing to be built well. I believe the focus on whether it is a swarm cell, supercedure cell or emergency cell is a waste of time. if a colony is strong enough to build and maintain a strong cell it will. With that thinking I would also suspect any colony that is producing an emergency cell has already suffered a decline in strength. Still this is not an issue of an emergency cell being inferior because it is an emergency cell. it is inferior because it is being made by a colony that is inferior. Intentionally build up a strong cell builder. and even though every cell it makes will be considered an emergency cell. They may all be superior to any unmanaged colonies swarm cells.The bees do not make categories for queen cells, we do. Bees make queen cells and they do so to the highest quality they are capable of.


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## sakhoney (Apr 3, 2016)

e- cells are all I use and have for at least 10 years - I don't graft - I move the queen from a selected hive - then on day 8/9 cut my cells and use them in nucs


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## twgun1 (Jun 26, 2015)

Sorry to hijack the thread but can someone elaborate "raising queens by division board method" I swear, there is not a queen to be bought in SW MN or SE SD. I'll have to try to make my own. I just need a few.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

twgun1 said:


> Sorry to hijack the thread but can someone elaborate "raising queens by division board method" I swear, there is not a queen to be bought in SW MN or SE SD. I'll have to try to make my own. I just need a few.


Have a look at this thread; It is about using double screen boards to isolate part of a colony that contains viable queen making eggs/larvae and induce them to start queen cells. It can be used for swarm control as well as queen rearing.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...rd-and-a-hive-split&highlight=Snelgrove+board

I have to go today to cull down the number of queen cells in 5 colonies which were induced by the Snelgrove / double screen division board method. Works great!


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

twgun1 said:


> Sorry to hijack the thread but can someone elaborate "raising queens by division board method" I swear, there is not a queen to be bought in SW MN or SE SD. I'll have to try to make my own. I just need a few.


If you are new to producing your own queens you should seriously consider just doing this to raise a few good queens.


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## marshmasterpat (Jun 26, 2013)

twgun1 said:


> Sorry to hijack the thread but can someone elaborate "raising queens by division board method" I swear, there is not a queen to be bought in SW MN or SE SD. I'll have to try to make my own. I just need a few.


I was wanting to ask the same question, so glad you did.

Crofter - Thanks for the link.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

It's not the method it's the strength of the cell builder that determines the queen.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I know people say the quality of emergency cells is lower than the quality of a swarm cell.

Everyone who is grafting is raising emergency cells...


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## m0dem (May 14, 2016)

:thumbsup: Michael Bush and JW


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I have some writings from back in the thirties on the changing analyses of the feed given to different aged and sex larvae. I am sure there is more definitive analysis available today. In any case the testing showed no difference in what was fed to the larvae for the first two days. It did not go into the question of whether there would be any difference depending on the attitude of a fertilized cell or whether there would be different outcomes if there was lavish food amounts as compared to merely adequate.

The factor of the amount, rather than the content of the larval feed seems to be what would be most affected by the shape, attitude and size of the cell the egg hatched in. I can understand the warm feeling that comes from the conviction that the larvae was fed profusely from the moment of hatch but perhaps that is putting anthropomorphic values onto the situation that have no basis in facts of life of a bee.

I think there is little question that sparse feeding and possible poor temperature control of incubation could stunt a queens ultimate potential but that extreme does not guarantee that a queen would definitely have poorer potential because the workers were tearing down cell walls during the time she was also being fed her pablum! Would the queen raised in that nice plastic cup be any smarter?

I dont know but I think if it were that cut and dried there would be more definitive data on the common record.


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## hivemaker (May 16, 2016)

Unless you start it a queenright hive all of your grafted cells are emergency cells. Pretty much all of queen rearing is practiced with emergency cells with rare exception.

That being said swarm or supersede cells are a better option just for the fact that the bees take more time to feed the larva prior to capping. I have seen emergency cells caped in three days flat. I think the bees are in a hurry to correct the situation and try and speed up the process. I think this leads to lower quality queens.


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

Emergency cells capped in 3 days? Totally goes against basic bee biology your bee math must have been off.


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## hivemaker (May 16, 2016)

From graft, not from egg. normal is about 5 days.


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

Makes sense when you graft larvae too old.


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## hivemaker (May 16, 2016)

doesn't explain why I haven't seen it in queenright starters with supersede cells instead of emergency, they consistently go 4-5 days.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

hivemaker said:


> doesn't explain why I haven't seen it in queenright starters with supersede cells instead of emergency, they consistently go 4-5 days.


What's the difference IF the grafted larva are the same age AND royal jelly is still left on the day the queen emerges?


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## hivemaker (May 16, 2016)

It may not make a bit of difference. But for me logic says that rushing the process likely results in a lower quality product. So I don't use queenless cell starters anymore.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

hivemaker said:


> Unless you start it a queenright hive all of your grafted cells are emergency cells. Pretty much all of queen rearing is practiced with emergency cells with rare exception.
> 
> That being said swarm or supersede cells are a better option just for the fact that the bees take more time to feed the larva prior to capping. I have seen emergency cells caped in three days flat. I think the bees are in a hurry to correct the situation and try and speed up the process. I think this leads to lower quality queens.


I don't know that I would agree that pretty much all queen rearing is producing emergency cells. I just set up a cell builder using a hive that is already swarmy - swarm cells containing larva already started along the bottoms of frames. I removed the swarm cells and reduced the size of the hive by removing mostly honey frames - I did also find and remove the queen. I'm adding grafts tomorrow morning. Yes, it's a queenless hive - but it's also a very swarmy hive. 

I'm pretty sure that I could do pretty much the same thing except confine the queen to the bottom hive body, and move all of the brood to the top box and get good results if the hive is strong enough. That's pretty much what the Ben Harden method is. Most of the mainstream queen rearing methods rely on strong queenright hives to do the cell building - while creating a queenless condition just to get the cells started reliably. I don't know that they really produce emergency cells since 3/4 of the time the cell is in a queenright hive.

Again though, it's splitting hairs at best, or semantics at worse. How many experts could examine a good cell (or queen) and tell you for sure if it's an "emergency" cell or not? I'd be willing to bet it would be a vanishingly small number of people.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

Brother Adam said that graft cells started and finished in his highly populated colonies were built on the swarm impulse. I think Doolittle and Jay Smith both said their graft cells were built on swarm impulse. The method of starting cells above a queenright bottom box is by the supersedure method. I guess if a person just removed a queen and stuck in a bar of grafts they would be emergency cells. The studies I have seen on emergency cells were mainly concerned with the larva age, Woyke found that 2 out of 3 times the bees selected larva of the correct age and 1 out of 3 they chose a larva that was past the best age to make satisfactory queens.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

AR Beekeeper said:


> I guess if a person just removed a queen and stuck in a bar of grafts they would be emergency cells.


Actually, even in those methods a lot of emphasis is put on packing the cell builder hives with lots of well-fed nurse bees. Again, resulting (when the planets align) in very high-quality queens. Probably indistinguishable from high quality queens produced by other methods.

Just my opinion - when choosing a queen rearing method, make your choice based on your needs, resources, and skill level instead of some hypothetical, immeasurable difference between "emergency" queens and other types.


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## tulsafarmer (Feb 28, 2016)

I think its more about how well the queen goes out and gets breed as to how good of a queen she is. And the weather can play a major role there, no matter how you raised her.Actually how the bees raised her.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

I sure do agree with that.


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## Colobee (May 15, 2014)

It's a combination. The lack of well reared _and_ well mated queens is likely the leading cause of the many queen failures we keep hearing about. Perhaps I should say that the folks who "settle" for one _or _the other are responsible for producing an inferior "product".

A poorly raised queen won't perform well, no matter how well she gets mated. Conversely, a well reared queen won't perform well if she's poorly mated.

Well reared, well mated. I want both, boss... Accept no substitutes!


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## asd (Jun 10, 2015)

I have a small black queen(out of a small QC of course - raised in cell starter/finisher), poorly raised. I kept it as an experiment. She's laying a nice regular pattern so far. Since I don't have new QC's yet I decided to keep her.


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## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

Having attempted my hand at grafting yesterday (which I am determined to learn) and seeing the dismal 1 in 6 acceptance rate this morning for my efforts, I have come to realize I am much better at making e-cell queens . The one accepted does have a huge pool of royal jelly to feed on. I have a queen going into this second season, emergency queen, who ranks among my best queens who I am attempting to graft from. Alright, time to go find this cell builder some fresh comb and young larvae!


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

hivemaker said:


> It may not make a bit of difference. But for me logic says that rushing the process likely results in a lower quality product. So I don't use queenless cell starters anymore.


What's being rushed? Grafting the tiniest of larva into a queenless cell starter and forcing them to use the larva you give them. How does that rush anything? I'm confused as to your line of thinking?
If you're grafting hours old larva and there is royal jelly left in the cells on the day that the queen finally emerges... what's the difference? Are you suggesting that the bees are so frantic that they magically rush the larva's development? :scratch: Isn't the yardstick that there's jelly left over at emergence? If there was sufficient jelly deposited day one and they drew and capped the cell that day, would that queen not be well fed over the course of her development?

Just trying to understand.


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## Stephenpbird (May 22, 2011)

crofter said:


> I have some writings from back in the thirties on the changing analyses of the feed given to different aged and sex larvae. I am sure there is more definitive analysis available today. In any case the testing showed no difference in what was fed to the larvae for the first two days.


I have Queen rearing written by L.E. Snelgrove, chapter 4 Brood food and Royal jelly, He references M. H. Haydak 1942 1943 Minnesota who states that the composition of royal jelly fed to queen larvae changes daily. That fed to a worker larvae is the same on day1 and 2 but then changes to a different composition for days 3-5 .



crofter said:


> It did not go into the question of whether there would be any difference depending on the attitude of a fertilized cell or whether there would be different outcomes if there was lavish food amounts as compared to merely adequate.


Again Haydak experimented with this, he found that any shortage of food even at pre pupal stage can retard the normal growth of a queen. The only way to be sure your queens are fully developed is to make sure there is an abundance of food.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

> I have seen emergency cells caped in three days flat.

I won't say you didn't, but I never have. C.C. Miller never did...

"So a worker-larva more than three days old, or more than six days from the laying of the egg would be too old for a good queen. If, now, the bees should select a larva more than three days old, the queen would emerge in less than nine days. I think no one has ever known this to occur. Bees do not prefer too old larvae. As a matter of fact bees do not use such poor judgment as to select larvae too old when larvae sufficiently young are present, as I have proven by direct experiment and many observations."--Fifty Years Among the Bees, C.C. Miller


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

jwcarlson said:


> What's being rushed? Grafting the tiniest of larva into a queenless cell starter and forcing them to use the larva you give them. How does that rush anything? I'm confused as to your line of thinking?
> If you're grafting hours old larva and there is royal jelly left in the cells on the day that the queen finally emerges... what's the difference? Are you suggesting that the bees are so frantic that they magically rush the larva's development? :scratch: Isn't the yardstick that there's jelly left over at emergence? If there was sufficient jelly deposited day one and they drew and capped the cell that day, would that queen not be well fed over the course of her development?
> 
> Just trying to understand.


I think the philosophy behind the issue is a queenless hive will stuff the cell with jelly and cap it sooner than say a queenright finisher which will take their time to properly feed it and cap when it's ready.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Michael Bush said:


> > I have seen emergency cells caped in three days flat.
> 
> I won't say you didn't, but I never have. C.C. Miller never did...
> 
> "So a worker-larva more than three days old, or more than six days from the laying of the egg would be too old for a good queen. If, now, the bees should select a larva more than three days old, the queen would emerge in less than nine days. I think no one has ever known this to occur. Bees do not prefer too old larvae. As a matter of fact bees do not use such poor judgment as to select larvae too old when larvae sufficiently young are present, as I have proven by direct experiment and many observations."--Fifty Years Among the Bees, C.C. Miller


If you graft larva that old and they do not have any other prospects for rearing a queen... what happens, then?
A horrible attempt at grafting last year lead to a "queen" emerging from her cell really quickly. She laid a bunch of eggs immediately and the bees kept cleaning them out. She never mated and before I killed her she didn't even lay anymore. Just wandered around the colony.

While the bees may not select them... if the grafter does, I suspect strange things like really early capping can be seen.

Grafted 5/16... on 5/26 this bee was laying eggs:


Never eggs on the side or multiple eggs. The patches she laid were solid eggs. 
Never knew quite what to make of her. What happened was frustration with my ineptitude at grafting that time. Foundationless comb was giving me a fit trying to graft from and so I just took big larva the last few that I grafted. So I know I grafted way too old of larva.



JRG13 said:


> I think the philosophy behind the issue is a queenless hive will stuff the cell with jelly and cap it sooner than say a queenright finisher which will take their time to properly feed it and cap when it's ready.


But so long as it's stuffed full of food... what does it matter? That's what I'm getting at. Is there anything other than conjecture or anecdotal evidence that supports that theory? 

I don't mean to come off as confrontational, I honestly would like to know if there's evidence of this. Because I've put in frames with eggs and graft age larva into hives I suspect are queenless. Turns out they are queenless, but they don't start emergency cells in the center of the frame where they larva were... they start them at the fringe in the area that had eggs when I dropped it in. 
Just trying to learn.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Stephenpbird said:


> I have Queen rearing written by L.E. Snelgrove, chapter 4 Brood food and Royal jelly, He references M. H. Haydak 1942 1943 Minnesota who states that the composition of royal jelly fed to queen larvae changes daily. That fed to a worker larvae is the same on day1 and 2 but then changes to a different composition for days 3-5 .
> 
> 
> 
> Again Haydak experimented with this, he found that any shortage of food even at pre pupal stage can retard the normal growth of a queen. The only way to be sure your queens are fully developed is to make sure there is an abundance of food.


Re post #38

I am not sure if you are refuting what I wrote or not. Is a worker larvae and a queen larvae not the same thing for the first two days? I agree that the simplest way to assume (after the fact) that the feeding was adequate for full development, is to see some unconsumed feed after the queen emerges. Unless observed continuously though we dont know if any slim periods occurred at some critical point.

I dont think anyone questions that a sparsely populated colony is apt to raise questionable queens. I think what is being questioned in this thread is whether there is any inherent or essential compromise in a queen produced from a larvae on the comb vs one hatched in a queen cup.

Perhaps the observation of apparently quick capping times is due to the first two days of cell construction occurring unnoticed within the comb.

The emergence time after isolation with a division board seems to indicate that the bees often dont start to work immediately on one and two day old larvae that are present but seem to wait till some of the eggs present hatch. Maybe those clever bugs start to tear down cell walls on the comb surrounding eggs rather than larvae. 

I dont think there is any question that bees will go to work raising a queen from older cells if they have absolutely no choice; heck they will even build cells around drone larvae if that is all they have.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>If you graft larva that old and they do not have any other prospects for rearing a queen... what happens, then?

Seldom that they don't have other prospects... but that is possible. They do the best they can. They can raise a queen from a larvae that hatched 3 days ago. She won't be very good and will be quickly superseded, but it has been observed.

>A horrible attempt at grafting last year lead to a "queen" emerging from her cell really quickly. She laid a bunch of eggs immediately and the bees kept cleaning them out. She never mated and before I killed her she didn't even lay anymore. Just wandered around the colony.

I would suspect that she did mate before she laid any eggs. I've never seen an unmated queen lay an egg.

>While the bees may not select them... if the grafter does, I suspect strange things like really early capping can be seen.

Of course. The point is the bees would not choose to do that. They only do it if they have to.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Michael Bush said:


> I would suspect that she did mate before she laid any eggs. I've never seen an unmated queen lay an egg.


How would you explain a drone laying queen reared in the dead of winter? She flies out and mates when it's 10 degrees?



Michael Bush said:


> Of course. The point is the bees would not choose to do that. They only do it if they have to.


I understand that. But most of these posts seem to be concerning grafted queens, in particular posts by hivemaker. Assuming that he/she is grafting.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

hivemaker said:


> It may not make a bit of difference. But _for me logic says_ that rushing the process_ likely results_ in a lower quality product. So I don't use queenless cell starters anymore.


 Italics mine.


Here we have matters of faith Vs matters of fact! I certainly have not raised a lot of queens and none from grafting; not very diligent at documentation and controls either. Leaps of faith can be a problem when chasing down all the links in the chain of cause and effect. 
_
The waving of the tree limbs causes the wind to blow!_


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Now that may be true. I have been watching that and have not reached any conclusions yet. but it does appear to me that a queen right cell builder may be a bit lax in accepting grafts and building them. Given there are only three reasons bees will make queen cells. Swarming, supersedure or emergency. I am not sure how you could cause the first two. Swarming you would simply have to wait for the bees to attempt to swarm. I suppose you could continually rod the colony of brood until they eventually attempt to make a new queen. can't even say that would work but it is an idea in how to cause supercedure attempts. This leaves only emergency response as a method of getting bees to produce queen cells. Done properly I see no reason an emergency cell could not be just as good as the best swarm cell. It is not a swarm or emergency cell to the bee. it is a queen cell period. I have seen some really nice queens come from some not so nice queen cells anyway. so what do we know about it.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

I have some queens that are just beginning to lay from my first serious attempt at cut cell. I had a pretty good take with queens present in 10 of 12. These cells were capped early, so I surmised that the larvae I took were too old. But they looked pretty much like the queens I raised using snelgrove boards. Except for one runty little queen that is running around like she owns the place. I'll she how she goes, let her build up her nuc a bit if she lays workers, before requeening her. They were good looking cells. 

I also had one batch of runty looking cells using the snelgrove board. But they were on new foundationless comb and the cells may be bigger (wide to the base of the comb) than first observation. If I remember I will report how these queens looked. All my snelgrove attempts of raising queens I have diverted foragers to isolated box (we are still on a flow) and kept them there until queen cells are capped. 

So Frank, I agree, there are lots of factors to consider. From my first year of queen rearing, I have 10 colonies that have built up from overwintered nucs into big boxes. 8 have built up nicely into 6 or 7 boxes with some having 100 pounds of honey on them. I have 2 commercial bought queens, one has built nicely, one is a dink. If I subdivided my yards and compared the variability of build up and production from different methods of queen rearing, would I be able to tell a difference? What if I did the same between home grown (however inept) and commercially provided queens? 

I probably went into winter with some small queens, some got weeded out by winter and ppbk. This year I have enough resources to identify and replace these queens before winter and hopefully the ppbk will be diminished. That should improve the odds as well.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

m0dem said:


> I know people say the quality of emergency cells is lower than the quality of a swarm cell.


When bees build emergency cells they arnt picky when starting the larvae, sometimes picking older larve to start. Age and timing of food is critical in developing a queen. The older larvae typically matures before the rest and rules the colony. 
Where as a swarm cell is started, timing on feeding of the larve is exact. I would not call grafted queens emergency queens. They are started in an emergency setting but the age of the larve given to start is controlled.

I'm sure I have lots of emergency queens in my apiary which work masterfully. But any cell guaranteed to be built with the correct age of larve will always be more consistent in quality


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>How would you explain a drone laying queen reared in the dead of winter? She flies out and mates when it's 10 degrees?

No. A queen who mated earlier got chilled and the sperm died leaving her a drone layer. I have yet to see an unmated queen lay. I wouldn't say mating in the middle of winter is impossible though. We often get 70 F days in winter and all my feral stock tends to keep a few drones all winter. But I think the more likely explanation is a chilled mated queen.

>Of course. The point is the bees would not choose to do that. They only do it if they have to.
I understand that. But most of these posts seem to be concerning grafted queens, in particular posts by hivemaker. Assuming that he/she is grafting.

Most methods of cell finishers have brood. The bees almost always have other choices even if you are grafting.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Michael Bush said:


> Everyone who is grafting is raising emergency cells...


You could probably take this statement a bit further, by saying that everyone making queens is raising emergency cells. I suspect that nearly no one is intentionally making queens by intentional swarming. That said, we all appreciate the beauty of a well-developed swarm cell, so we strive to replicate the conditions that produce such cells. Grafting, miller, jenter, etc, are the easy part of the process. Making REALLY good cells is all about the cell builder and its management. So don't worry about the name given the cell, focus on what it takes to make a really good cell builder.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Michael Bush said:


> >How would you explain a drone laying queen reared in the dead of winter? She flies out and mates when it's 10 degrees?
> 
> No. A queen who mated earlier got chilled and the sperm died leaving her a drone layer. I have yet to see an unmated queen lay. I wouldn't say mating in the middle of winter is impossible though. We often get 70 F days in winter and all my feral stock tends to keep a few drones all winter. But I think the more likely explanation is a chilled mated queen.


I found the previous queen dead on the sticky board sometime in January. Emergency cell with tell tale emerged tip at first inspection in March and one torn down next to it. I don't think they even had cleansing flights between really, they certainly didn't have drones. Drone brood at same inspection. No worker brood left in the hive.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

> they certainly didn't have drones.

Your hive didn't. The feral bees around here always do have a few.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Michael Bush said:


> > they certainly didn't have drones.
> 
> Your hive didn't. The feral bees around here always do have a few.


You're probably right, she flew out when temps were in the 30s and mated. 

Furthermore... my hives are "feral", at least in origin.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I dont know what Tibo Szabo uses for ingredient in the bees he sells but they keep quite a few drones overwinter. I dont know how much juice those old boys would have in the spring though! It is middle or third week in may before this years drones are flying.

Re age of Larvae. I have a few of Snelgroves books and he was pretty well accredited in his day. Cant tell you the exact quote but he said that older workers were more apt to start cells on older larvae than young nurse bees will. 

I have seen some cells torn down when the division board procedure is used to promote the construction of queen cells. Perhaps this is a demonstration of older aged larvae being de selected! I believe the bees must have a mechanism to prevent the prevalence of always the older age larvae (or aged, in a negative sense) being the one to head the colony. If it was clearly detrimental and no mechanism in place to prevent it, such would be genetic suicide.


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## snapper1d (Apr 8, 2011)

sakhoney said:


> e- cells are all I use and have for at least 10 years - I don't graft - I move the queen from a selected hive - then on day 8/9 cut my cells and use them in nucs


Same here.When the eyes and hands cant do it like the use to you will also.Then its also easier and most of the time I always get really good queens.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I don't want to go into my non-graft frame yet. It is already built and 
ready for a laying queen to test it out. When the eyes is blurry and the hands are shaky at
that age I'll continue to raise some emergency well fed queens from day one.
So is it still consider an emergency queen using the 4 days old larva that just hatched? Now put all of these developing cells on
the pollen frames and you'll see something amazing. 
MB and Jw, last year late into the winter I had 3 emergency queens emerged. I waited for 2 months for them
to take their mating flights in the cold 40F and sometimes rainy days here. Came late Jan. and they have not mated
yet. The weather is perfect in mid-Feb in the high 60s in order for any queen to take her mating flights. Besides, in
the too early Spring time even the drones are not there. So I tracked them for almost 2 months and finally gave up
on them. The hive population is dwindling so my patience ran out and I don't want to deal with the LWs just in case.
Yes, it is true that in the cold less than 60F the virgins will not take their mating flights. They rather stay warm and cozy
inside instead. Do a test experiment like I did if you would like to know if this situation is repeatable with the same final results. But
I would not waste anymore hive resources knowing this outcome already. Don't want to repeat it anymore. Winter time no more virgins for me to try!


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

m0dem said:


> I know people say the quality of emergency cells is lower than the quality of a swarm cell.


Yes, what they say is often true, but not necessarily so if done properly.



mOdem said:


> Why so? I think the bees know what age of larvae makes a good queen. And if you supply them the best age (3-1/2 day old egg-larvae), will they not build a queen of high quality?


The difference is that swarms are made in as near ideal conditions as possible, and the larvae were meant to be queens from the very beginning. Almost the entire colony is in swarming impulse. Pollen abounds, things are as good as it gets. The nurse bees are ready to make a ton of royal jelly.

Emergency queens are made in a few hours' notice. Very little of the colony may be prepared to build super-quality queens at the moment of realization of queenlessness. The bees come together to deal with the situation as best they can, but it may not be as intense an effort as it would have been under swarming conditions.

Beekeepers raising queens TRY to make queen cells under swarming conditions, but controlling the exact timing by making them suddenly queenless. This way there is far less chance of a queen hatching out early and killing the other queen cells.



mOdem1429156 said:


> After all, isn't the Miller method technically harvesting emergency cells?
> Thanks.


Yes, but Dr. Miller's method can be used to harvest cells that are made under swarming conditions, tripped by the queenless state. It takes advantage of the presence of many eggs and larvae of different ages, allowing the bees their choice of whom to feed royal jelly, and thus become a queen. They are not removed from their own cell and transferred to a cell cup, as in Doolittle's grafting method. Very high quality queens can be made by this and other methods where the exact timing is tripped by the queenless state.

Miller's method combined with a Cloake board and importing 8 frames of capped brood like Brother Adam and Michael Palmer's method does, can make some awesome queen cells in March, April, and May. Down here in Southern California that can start as early as January if some very strong colonies make it over winter and the pollen flow starts fast and early. Farther North, it can happen as late as June or July, maybe even August.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>You're probably right, she flew out when temps were in the 30s and mated.

I don't live in your climate, but I've never seen a winter pass where there weren't days in the 60s and sometimes even in the 70s. I can only remember one winter in the last few decades where there was not one flying day from the first frost until spring.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

Friday we encountered half a dozen abnormal queen cells, I believe properly classified as "emergency", although maybe more accurately "Hail Mary" queen cells. I don't think most of them were viable.

The hive in question was queenless, made that way by me a couple of weekends ago. The old queen had swarmed, and the new one never started laying. On successive weekends, we introduced two frames of brood with eggs, and then, seeing no queen cells after a week, pinched this bum queen and gave two more frames of brood with eggs. The following weekend, no sign of queen cells. We had a couple of new queens getting ready in a queen castle, so this weekend we opened the hive to introduce the new queen. Low and behold ... these scrawny capped queen cells were present, including queen cells on the earliest frames we had introduced. I was counting my fingers trying to figure out when they had been made, and the bee math was telling me that it was unlikely they had been getting royal jelly since being eggs, since there had been no hint of queen cell construction the previous weekend. Certainly, the cells on the older frames must have been made late.

But I had a new proven laying queen in my pocket and these queen cells were coming out. Examining the pupae, at least two of them were tiny, less than half an inch long, and one of those was dark-eyed. There was one that looked like it might be normal size for queen pupae, and that was fairly well developed, although with white eyes. One of the small ones had a foundress mite on it ... I would think a queen cell would be pointless for varroa mite reproduction, since their brood cycle is too short.

So, here's the question: will desperate bees sometimes put a small larvae back on a royal jelly diet, and build a queen cell around it? Can an undersized pupae ever develop into a queen? I would think that a capped queen cell needs to contain a queen-sized pupae, as there is no way to continue feeding it after it is capped.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

The first 2 or 3 days of emergency cell construction can go unnoticed because it is happening below the level of surrounding cells. That means that the final form and capping of the cell may appear quite small externally and take place in 2 or 3 days. If you do a cross section on the whole cell including what is hidden in the comb it appears similar in volume to the classic cell started from an intentional queen cup.

I think 76 hours after egg hatch is about the cut off point to have a larvae made into a queen with full capabilities. Beyond this point is viable but will be compromised. The bees will raise these caste queens which may lay a few eggs before being superceded. A caste queen can have varying degrees of compromise from being outwardly unnoticeable all the way down to looking very close to a worker bee.


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