Qeeen Cells in hive today

[Jeff Buzz]

Just checked one of hives and found 2 queens cells being built with eggs in.
I guess they are supersedure cells as they are half way up a frame.
Queen is in the hive with a small amount of brood about 8 frames of bees and plenty of food....(sound like a poem)

Should I squish the cells ????

 

[MuswellMetro]

Just checked one of hives and found 2 queens cells being built with eggs in.
I guess they are supersedure cells as they are half way up a frame.
Queen is in the hive with a small amount of brood about 8 frames of bees and plenty of food....(sound like a poem)

Should I squish the cells ????

are the cups old or are they speckled with newly deposited wax , if not speckled then just the Queen running out of laying space, if speckled then they mean business

squish them , if the latter of above then the queen may not survive winter

 

[Jeff Buzz]

They are the business nice new cells

 

[WelshPaul]

We had bottom frame new queen cells, that's swarm ones if I remember right, on Sunday. Strange old year.


---
I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=51.666977,-3.017392

 

[the naked beekeeper]

I would not squish them!!

The bees know best.
They have built them for a reason.

I highly doubt that any new queen will be able to mate anyway, but I would definitely leave them.

Why would bees do anything other than act in their best interests of survival? In most cases.

 

[itma]

...The bees know best.
...
Why would bees do anything other than act in their best interests of survival? In most cases.

As you point out, the bees don't ALWAYS know best!




Seen any drones recently?

BTW, how old is the resident Q?

 

[Jeff Buzz]

She is this years queen, laying rate has obviously dropped recently especially a with thymol treatment but there are day old eggs in some cells.

So if I leave the QC and they hatch I take it they are not going to be viable queens as there are no drone around.

 

[user 6228]

Have you recently closed up the entrance with a mouse guard or similar?
I have recently had a reaction like that with a hot hive and a closed up entrance (against wasps), I opened the entrance wide squashed the cells the swarming behaviour went away.
Entrance size seems to very important to bees at various times ( See Prof. Thomas Seeley papers)

 

[Swarm]

The bees have decided to supersede, leave them alone to get on with it.

 

[rog]

If they supercede now how will the new queen mate and become viable? No drones in my hives for many weeks now.

 

[Poggle]

We had bottom frame new queen cells, that's swarm ones if I remember right, on Sunday.[/url]

Is this a hard fact that queen cells on the bottom are swarm ones????

 

[adrian wilford]

no!!!
no drones, so could end up with laying worker

 

[Russel]

The cells WP's referring to had larva in one but were squished as we concluded they would not be viable this late in the year but ???????

 

[RoseCottage]

We had the same issue last week Jeff and ended up with 3 virgins in one of our colonies.

This time of year is not great so we can only really let the bees sort themselves out and plan to watch closely in the spring build up. If we can we then probably will need to requeen with eggs from another of our colonies early next year after locating and removing any queen or shaking out the colony to beat the DLW.

If the bees don't get through winter we will be a little surprised as they are a large colony now with most of the overwintering bees in the colony. It is an unfortunate set of circumstances but you just have to be vigilant and deal with what you find at the best time for the colony ...and now is most likely one of the worst times of year to be introducing change to the bees.

Still we have winter to prepare...

All the best,
Sam

 

[CB008]

Just checked one of hives and found 2 queens cells being built with eggs in.
I guess they are supersedure cells as they are half way up a frame.
Queen is in the hive with a small amount of brood about 8 frames of bees and plenty of food....(sound like a poem)

Should I squish the cells ????

I had the same thing a couple of weeks back. However, when I looked one week later they had torn down the 2 new charged QC's. The Queen is still there and lkaying so I guess they will supercede in spring

 

[Swarm]

Precisely. Nothing to say these cells won't be torn down.

 

[itma]

Not sure why you wouldn't want to remove those QCs yourself.

Yes you could hope that the bees would do it themselves, but why not make sure?

As days get colder, there has to be less chance that they would repeat the mistake of thinking that this would be a good time for a swarm or supersession.

You have a current-year queen, who is laying just fine.
You don't want a swarm or virgin queen.
So why not rub out the QCs?

Sure you may have just postponed whatever problem until Spring, but, for over-wintering, wouldn't it help the bees for you to say "don't try that now" ???

 

[Swarm]

I didn't say I would hope the bees tear them down, simply that they might.

Earlier you implied there are no drones about

"Seen any drones lately?"

Well I saw drones last week and I expect I will see some more later today. They will probably be around until end of month or at least, that's been the pattern over the past few years.

 

[MandF]

We still have drones flying from both our hives, but we are in SW London.

 

[oliver90owner]

A difficult decision at this time of the year maybe.

I would leave them now, if I only had a couple colonies and could not unite, or take some other sensible form of action. Poster has half a dozen colonies so either leave or unite is the answer to this particular scenario.

If a virgin hatches, she is unlikely to mate, possibly even unlikely to leave the hive on a mating flight. There is a laying queen and even with another in the hive she may remain there all winter.

Better to have a queen of some description in the hive than none at all through the winter. Uniting in spring would then be the option should they have a drone layer.

RAB