No new queen cells

[Heather]

I have apideas, each with plenty of bees in.
All had good queens so plenty of brood.
I have given those mated queens to people with queenless hives, and just assumed that my apideas would have new queen cells within 14 day as brood present was eggs to capped.
Looked today... not one queen cell, dammit..all bees behaving ok, looking after the capped brood, but why have they made no effort to produce a new queen..
I have grafted a few one day larvae into the cells of each apidea and now fingers crossed.

My question.. why did they not make new queens??

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

apideas are far too small to make a queen cell in - even if they had made one, with the small amount of bees within, the queen would have been fairly poor.
once the first queen is mated and removed, an apidea is only good for receiving QC's properly raised elsewhere.

 

[Heather]

Thanks.. have virgins in my incubator.. will transfer..

 

[masterBK]

When Queens are removed from their Apideas I often introduce a sealed queen cell an hour or so later. Sometimes they are rejected and the bees build one or two runts of emergency cells from the brood of the previous queen resulting in a scrub queen. In one case they built three cells with one larger than the others and the queen that emerged from this was given a chance (as an experiment). It surprisingly turned out OK with the queen laying well up to winter and then managed several weeks laying up 15 full frames the following season before I replaced her (I want bees to be steady on the comb and her ofspring ran around the comb far too much for my liking).

 

[Heather]

Well that is encouraging MasterBK, as I still have a couple of apideas who are 'on their own' as run out of virgins!! But they had lovely brood from previous queens. Lets hope Jenkins incorrect as loads of bees on 10 frame apideas. (5 frames in extension above)

 

[masterBK]

If you put the little Apidea combs in a top super of a queen -right colony (better still in a demaree top BC) and even better strill in a strong queenless colony the queen larvae will be better fed than leaving them in the Apidea and you will get bigger queens with more ovarioles .