Hived swarm supersedure

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Deaner666

New Bee
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Cornwall
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Hi all - just looking for some reassurance / guidance here.

I'm in my second year of beekeeping (but the first in which I should get some honey!). Me and my beekeeping buddy (me mum!), caught a swarm in a bait box about 6 weeks ago.

On our first inspection after moving them into the apiary, we found three large queen cells, all unsealed.

I guessed these were supersedure cells, which seemed perfectly natural to me (old queen leaves old hive to start a new one elsewhere, bees replace her with a virile new queen).

The three cells were all still visible on subsequent inspections and always unsealed. There was a gap of about 2 weeks between two of the inspections due to weather. I did wonder if a new queen had been hatched during this period.

However, I inspected the hive last Wednesday (25th July) and found all three queen cells sealed. So I guess they've only just now got round to performing the supersedure.

Am I right to leave the bees to get on with superseding by themselves in this situation (if superseding is indeed what they're doing?). Somebody from the local association said I should destroy two of the queen cells and just leave one to hatch - why would this be? Surely the bees rear more than one cell for a reason?

Are there any further actions I should take once the new queen is hatched? Anything I need to do to ensure she's properly mated etc.?

Cheers,

Dave
 
Hi again,

If they are supercedure cells I would leave them as is, and let the first virgin sort it out.

Once she has hatched, re: mating, there isnt much you can do apart from pray for a few days of consecutive nice weather around lunchtime :)

Unfortunately it will be some time before you will know if she mated ok, and if you are relying on this being a nice mated queen for overwintering you will be better advised to buy in a verified mated queen, so she can hit the ground running asap.
 
firstly, when you say there have been 3 queen cells present for some time I take it you mean queen cups? (like a queen cell, but empty, and not developed to full length)

have you seen the queen on the last inspection?
did you see any eggs on last inspection?

these need to be answered ( if possible) before advice (worthwhile advice) can be given.
 
firstly, when you say there have been 3 queen cells present for some time I take it you mean queen cups? (like a queen cell, but empty, and not developed to full length)

No. This is what surprised me. From the very first inspection they were full length (but unsealed) full-on queen cells.

have you seen the queen on the last inspection?
did you see any eggs on last inspection?

I've not seen the queen and not seen the eggs themselves, but lots of larvae and brood - all in really good condition. The laying pattern is perfect. They've not expanded hugely though, they're only on 5 frames and don't seem to be increasing much now. Although I guess that's normal for this time of year.
 
my 'best guess' is that they've swarmed. I'd go and remove all but one queen cell, and do the same again in 5 days time (leaving the same one each time), then 'do not disturb' for 3 full weeks.
other advice will follow, I'm sure ;)
 
my 'best guess' is that they've swarmed. I'd go and remove all but one queen cell, and do the same again in 5 days time (leaving the same one each time), then 'do not disturb' for 3 full weeks.
other advice will follow, I'm sure ;)

They were a swarm that we attracted into a bait hive - do you mean you think they've swarmed again since we caught them?

What's the idea behind leaving only one cell? As I mentioned in the OP, somebody else said the same thing.
 
I am not sure on the time lapse between you getting the swarm and the first inspection. If they have indeed swarmed again then the reason you leave only one queen cell is that there is a chance that the first virgin out will leave with yet another swarm. If you only leave one cell then that probably won't happen. The fact that there are no eggs is sus for the swarm. My concern is that the queen cells have been sealed since you first saw them. Something doesn't seem right to me! I would be worried that they may have sealed workers in there. As you have three cells I would open one to see what is inside. If nothing then open one more, if nothing then leave the last one but ...... Who knows what is in there. If you find a good healthy developing queen in the first I would leave the other two.
I think you need to investigate further and report back!
E
 
The fact that there are no eggs is sus for the swarm.

I'm not saying there aren't eggs in there, just that I haven't seen them specifically. But I can never see eggs in either of the two hives in our apiary! A combination of wearing glasses, looking through a veil, the dappled blinding light we get playing through the bushes above the hive and me being rubbish mean I can never make out the eggs themselves, but I know they're there because there are also larvae (sealed and unsealed).

My concern is that the queen cells have been sealed since you first saw them.

They weren't sealed when I first saw them. The unsealed cells have been there for weeks, I've only just seen them sealed over on the most recent inspection.
 
There are differences between queen cell types - swarm, emergency and supercedure,

A part built and unoccupied cell is termed a play cup until it becomes 'activated' by the bees and contains royal jelly and a larva. The positions on the frame and the form are characteristic.

Queens rarely swarm twice. Perhaps rarely is too strong but 'not usually' is maybe a better term to use.

You seem to have a typical scenario for orderly queen change, but without more detail that is just a good guess.

If the cells are typically mid-frame and hanging vertically just away from the comb, and there being only three, the odds are stacked towards supercedure.

It often happens before the season ends and goes unnoticed, when fewer inspections are made.

Maybe the bees know something about how the season is going to progress and are preparing for winter rather earlier than we would hope (who could blame them for that, in this miserable year).

There may be two queens in the hive for some time - perhaps into the winter, but the odds will be that the old queen is gone before the spring.

There is always the risk that the bees may change their minds and swarm, but again that is less likely.

So leaving them to it is the best I would suggest.
 
Update!

Slightly late with this, but I was struck down with a viral infection and am only just recovering...

Last Tuesday (31st July), I got a call at work from my mum saying there was a swarm of bees in the garden (the apiary is in my mum's garden). I had a horrible feeling it was our big successful hive and we'd missed swarm signs at our previous inspections.

I went straight round after work and found a very small swarm sat up under the pergola. Before capturing the swarm we had a quick peek inside the our existing two hives...

The large successful one looked perfectly normal with no sign of having swarmed.

The smaller hive, the one in question in the OP, seemed to have about the same number of bees as on the previous inspection (although it was later in the day, so I guess there were far fewer flying bees), a fair bit of sealed brood but practically no unsealed larvae (I didn't see eggs either, but I never do). However, there was now an extra queen cell (or at least one I hadn't found previously), this one on the bottom of the same frame that contained the original three (the other three were in the middle of the frame vertically). The new one was also a bit stubby in comparison to the others.

One of the original three queen cells had the cap unhinged and was empty - the queen had hatched!

Then, as we were looking at this hatched queen cell, I noticed the workers crowding round one of the other queen cells. I could actually hear the snicking of jaws and lo and behold they appeared to unhinge the cap on this cell too! We looked inside and it was empty. I was most puzzled by this and couldn't understand what I'd just seen.

We caught the swarm and I went home and did some reading of Ted Hooper's book. He mentioned the ends of hatched queen cells would have a tougher, more papery feel to them than an unhatched cell, as the soft wax was reinforced by the queen's cocoon. He also noted that workers would often reseal a hatched queen cell (sometimes with a worker still inside eating the royal jelly!).

So, the next day I couldn't resist having another quick peep. I tested the end of the two hatched queen cells and they both definitely felt like there was cocoon behind the wax. It was exactly as Ted described, so I'm sure they had both hatched. And then I remembered my mum had said she thought she'd seen another small swarm disappearing down the valley a few days earlier!

I'm putting two and two together here, and maybe coming up with the wrong number, but I'm guessing we've had two virgin queens hatch and abscond with a small retinue of bees, rather than sticking around to rear the colony. I don't understand why this would be though, since the colony is a swarm itself that only fills 4/5 frames! Is this normal behaviour? Also, the laying queen that was leading the colony when we caught it now doesn't seem to be laying. Maybe she swarmed again and was one of the swarms my mum saw - if so, what happened to the second queen to hatch? Is she still in the hive? If so, why hasn't she killed the other growing queens?

Anyway, I pulled the newer, stubbier queen cell to see what was in it, and there was indeed a healthy growing queen pupa in there. I left the remaining unhatched, better looking queen cell to hatch in its own time.

What are peoples' thoughts on this? Anybody able to give me advice on what is going on?
 
I had a hived swarm earlier in the year and was assured by all and sundry that unless I ddin't manage them properly (by which I understood to mean if I didn't give them enough space etc) they wouldn't swarm again. So I supered them but still, they swarmed. This was getting towards the end of June so I went through the hive thoroughly, knocked out all the queen cells I could find and combined them with another colony. They went on to give me a super of honey and are now queenright again and producing more honey.

Bearing in mind it's getting late in the season I would look at the numbers of bees you have and think about combining them with a queenright hive to get them through the winter now.
 
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