No Q cells in demaree

[bees knees]

Hi. Did a demaree for swarm prevention and at 7 days no q cells in the top brood box. We put 3 supers between the 2 brood boxes. Any idea why this would happen?

 

[JamezF]

A demaree isn't guaranteed to produce queen cells in the top box. Perhaps the queen pheromones are still sufficiently strong in the top box that the bees feel no urge to make them, or perhaps there weren't any suitable eggs/larvae to make them from.

James

 

[hemo]

Q pheromones may be very strong so the demeree have found no need to raise new ones.
As James has mentioned Dem's don't always produce QC's.

Quite often I don't always carry out a Demeree though I do remove the sealed to place above in a BB to aleviate BB congestion and provide extra room even with a doube brood set up.

 

[Curly green finger's]

Have you used a demaree board ?
Some times they will rip cells down I’ve found .
As others have said if the queens pheromones are strong they won’t bother, if you use a demaree make sure the hole with qx over it is only an inch or two.
Another thing to do is when you perform a demaree put a sheet of news paper over the first brood box then the qx supers brood box with all the brood .

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Hi. Did a demaree for swarm prevention and at 7 days no q cells in the top brood box. We put 3 supers between the 2 brood boxes. Any idea why this would happen?

It's never guaranteed to get QC's - even with a Demaree board

In fact I've noticed that this year especially, many Demaree'd colonies aren't making QC's in the top box.
Also, you will often struggle to see QCs on day seve, but on day eight/nine a few sealed ones just pop up from nowhere!