acabee
House Bee
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2011
- Messages
- 126
- Reaction score
- 0
- Location
- Bucks/Herts
- Hive Type
- Commercial
- Number of Hives
- 2
hi,
just looking through strong, fiesty hive.
From swarm in May with this year's queen.
Hive has plenty of stores and brood in all stages.
Saw a queen cup near bottom of frame to one side.
Cup is not drawn out yet in the typical hanging down of completed QC.
It does have royal jelly, but no larvae visible in it / floating.
Doesn't look like a supersedure due to low position on frame.
Two questions:
1 Do bees sometime construct a cup and add royal jelly, but queen does not lay in it?
2 Is prescence of royal jelly in a queen cup on its own (ie no larvae that I can see) an indication of swarming intent?
I think my next action should be to re-inspect in 3 days to see if this cup has larvae and if need be do an AS. All seems rather late for swarming, but who knows this year
acabee
just looking through strong, fiesty hive.
From swarm in May with this year's queen.
Hive has plenty of stores and brood in all stages.
Saw a queen cup near bottom of frame to one side.
Cup is not drawn out yet in the typical hanging down of completed QC.
It does have royal jelly, but no larvae visible in it / floating.
Doesn't look like a supersedure due to low position on frame.
Two questions:
1 Do bees sometime construct a cup and add royal jelly, but queen does not lay in it?
2 Is prescence of royal jelly in a queen cup on its own (ie no larvae that I can see) an indication of swarming intent?
I think my next action should be to re-inspect in 3 days to see if this cup has larvae and if need be do an AS. All seems rather late for swarming, but who knows this year
acabee