Queen cells + emerged cell

[sean-a]

Have gone through a hive today and found an emerged queen.
Eggs and BIAS but no queen ....oops!

I had a super on under a QE and a brood box below.
In the super were lots of queen cells, and one emerged queen cell.

I have made up the queencells into nucs with a frame of capped brood and some stores.

Not sure if the emerged queen will have already killed the queen cells though.
I have made up 3 nucs and left a single queen cell in the brood box.

No sign of the queen, but masses of drones!

Do you think that the cells might still be viable?

 

[Jimmy]

If you have more QC's than needed and doubts about viability, why not sacrifice one to check?

Better still IMHO would be to make up a queen less nuc, check that it is Q- with a frame of eggs and then introduce a mated queen from non-swarmy stock.