large capped queen cell - Help

[thebhoy]

Not wanting to hijack someone else' thread.....I have a similar situation this morning.

Going through hive some QC's charged, empty or with larvae.

Find one very large QC....on one frame.....approx 1/3rd from top of 14 x 12 (supercedure??)
Did see queen, only third time I have seen her as small and dark, unmarked and unclipped but then lost her again as I went through colony.

Eggs and Bias but not a great deal although colony is reasonable size.

Tried to split hive and put queen and some frames into another box, couldn't find her again, had plenty of fanning from the bees in the new BB and decided to shake frames onto a QE to see if I could find her but still no joy.

Left QC in BB on original site, hoping that the queen is in the other box.

What should I have done ? what should I do? Demaree???

Go back into hive, add a new box on floor, add empty drawn combs, shake bees into it, add QE,add the supers again, another QE and put all brood frames from original box on top for the nurse bees to move up?

Other suggestions???

I may be too late and they have now gone.

 

[yeogi75]

if it was me I would put the cell into nuc with frames of food and pollen and leave alone to hatch and mate then try and sort out hive and clip queen if found before you loose her

 

[HM Honey]

Eggs and Bias but not a great deal although colony is reasonable size.

Could mean that you just have a failing queen. Do you know how old she is? The fact that you have what sounds like a supercedure cell would appear to indicate they are trying to replace her.

You say there isn't a lot of eggs/BIAS, but are you saying there are loads of empty cells or is the rest of the space taken up by stores?

If the latter, then do you have access to any empty drawn frames? If you do, take out some of the stores and replace with empty frames to give them space to use.

If you have loads of empty cells, I would be surprised to find that they are wanting to swarm. Bees don't swarm simply because its the right time of year, they swarm because they are running out of space. Doesn't sound like that's the case here. I may be wrong though, coz I cant see them.

 

[HM Honey]

if it was me I would put the cell into nuc with frames of food and pollen and leave alone to hatch and mate then try and sort out hive and clip queen if found before you loose her

If its a supercedure cell, I would just leave them to get on with it tbh. If you remove it and they are determined to replace her, they will just create another one. You'll run out of empty NUC's before they run out of eggs....

 

[MuswellMetro]

If its a supercedure cell, I would just leave them to get on with it tbh. If you remove it and they are determined to replace her, they will just create another one. You'll run out of empty NUC's before they run out of eggs....

 

[thebhoy]

She is one year old.
They were in swarm mode last week with QC's on several frames but again, could be more supercedure.
They have laying space from emerged brood and cleaned shiny cells for her to lay up, they have stores within the frames, not too much, and also have supers in place with a good volume of nectar within them.

I had split them today, trying to take queen away from colony and leaving the QC....couldn't be sure it worked as she is difficult to spot.

Perhaps I should go back and join them up again and let it run its course.... confused dot com for sure

 

[Midland Beek]

I may be too late and they have now gone.

Bees do not swarm until at least one queen cell has been capped.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Sometimes they do

 

[thebhoy]

And this was capped ...

 

[beeno]

Sod's Law. I take it she ended up in wrong box! Hope the QC comes good for you.

 

[oliver90owner]

In other words, OP has no clue as to whether this is supercedure or swarm mode, has no idea where the queen is and no idea of what to do next?

Best do nothing or likely things will get worse. Look for new eggs. That will tell you all you need to know in order to make a hopefully sensible decision as to what to do next.

If no eggs she may, by then, have gone, if eggs you at least know where she is. If you find emergency queen cells, that, too, might be some indication.