Supercedure, what do I do?

[sjt]

When I checked my hives today, all well, queen laying really well and honey coming along nicely, well behaved bees.
I got to the last frame of brood and there was a lovely single queen cell, right in the centre of the frame. Looks like a half grown larva inside, lots of royal jelly.
The present queen is from April last year although I did not see her today there were lots of eggs.
Do I let them get on with things, the bees know best and all that or do I requeen them with a mated queen (I do have a spare one)? I thought it might be a bit late in the season for a successful mating

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I thought it might be a bit late in the season for a successful mating

It's the first week in August for goodness sake plenty of time

 

[Beecarer]

When I checked my hives today, all well, queen laying really well and honey coming along nicely, well behaved bees.
I got to the last frame of brood and there was a lovely single queen cell, right in the centre of the frame. Looks like a half grown larva inside, lots of royal jelly.
The present queen is from April last year although I did not see her today there were lots of eggs.
Do I let them get on with things, the bees know best and all that or do I requeen them with a mated queen (I do have a spare one)? I thought it might be a bit late in the season for a successful mating

Is the old queen clipped? Sometimes those 'supercedure' will swarm, even seen a hive where the old queen was removed to a nuc and the newly emerged 'supercedure' queen swarmed, leaving the hive queenless with no remaining queencells.

 

[beeno]

Hi Beecarer,
I read somewhere that in selecting a QC watch out for the large ones as in they are no good. Perhaps someone can expand on that advice. However, I have had two instances of single beautiful QCs and they were no good. One produced a queen that did not take colony through winter very well and withered away early spring. Second one from same genetic was dud. Keep a close eye to see if the Q emerges. Otherwise you might end up with a bunch of emergency cells!

 

[Obee1]

I have had bees trying to supercede a queen for no good reason that I can see. I removed the cells to a nuc and left queen in hive. The two qc that were allowed to proceed have both produced queens. Whether they manage a decent mating remains to be seen. Also whether the bees try again to supercede the original queen remains to be seen - if only I dared open up that hive - they are a bit too arsey for being opened in the garden where they live. I could really do with cctv inside the hive

 

[BeeJayBee]

It's the first week in August for goodness sake plenty of time

Autumn supersedure is quite common - the bees are left to get on with what they need to do without interference from the beekeeper, who discovers a nice new queen during the first inspection in Spring.

Consider this ...

Fossil records suggest that bees, as a species, date back 34 million years.
Apis mellifera is believed to have appeared about 6-9 million years ago.

Homo habilis appeared around 2.8 million years ago, but Homo sapiens wasn't on the scene until somewhere between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago.
Oldest evidence of mankind collecting honey from wild bees is in a cave painting in Spain dating back only about 8,000 years.
Egyptians kept bees in clay cylinders, which were moved from one harvest to another down the Nile.

Virgil and Varro wrote treatises about beekeeping, but believed colonies were headed by a King. This wasn't challenged until 16th century with the publication of "The Feminine Monarchie" by Charles Butler, vicar of Wootton St Lawrence near Basingstoke.

Movable frames were first used by Langstroth in 1851, which gave us humans the first real chance to fully inspect a colony without causing untold damage. We can now look at (inspect) our bees, see what they are doing, and somehow tend to believe we know what's best.

Brother Adam had it about right, when he said, "Let the bees tell you" and, "... my working methods are based on the simplest and most elementary principles and above all on the avoidance of any unnecessary disturbance of the colonies."

 

[sjt]

I shall go along the route of 'let them get on with it' There's still plenty of drones about so I'll find out eventually what happens (present queen is marked)

 

[Tremyfro]

I also have a colony which kept making superceedure cells. I had introduced a new queen to a nuc...which was hived up as it grew. The queen was laying well. The colony produced new queen cells throughout the summer...always on a hole in the comb. So after several rounds of this I took out my expensive queen and let them get on with it. They have just had a queen emerge...and we are finally enjoying a few nice sunny days....so I am hoping that she won't have to battle with high winds, low temperatures, rain in order to mate.
The original queen is laying in the nuc...it will be interesting to see if the nuc bees start to make superceedure cells too. I can't see anything wrong with the queen ...but then ...I am just a beginner.

 

[For want of a better word]

Too often I have seen superceedure followed by superceedure followed by colony loss... IMOHO wrong sort of bees being kept in wrong environmental conditions for that type of subspecies / hybrid

Yeghes da

 

[Obee1]

Too often I have seen superceedure followed by superceedure followed by colony loss... IMOHO wrong sort of bees being kept in wrong environmental conditions for that type of subspecies / hybrid

Yeghes da

Yes I'm beginning to wonder if that might be the problem. I also suspect putting a different type of queen into an established colony is causing me problems. However when i compare my bucky queen colony from Pete with my local bred bee it's worth going through the hassle as his are amazingly easy bees to handle. I'm not quite ready to quit buying in expensive well bred queens just yet. Maybe when I've lost a few more to supercedure or going awol I will feel differently.

 

[B+.]

I'm not quite ready to quit buying in expensive well bred queens just yet. Maybe when I've lost a few more to supercedure or going awol I will feel differently.

I have a bill for 566euros for mine but they're worth every penny (cent) !

 

[Tremyfro]

I have a bill for 566euros for mine but they're worth every penny (cent) !

....but what fun you will have this coming year. Worth every penny.

 

[For want of a better word]

Just keep them up your end of the Bristol Chanel please!!!


Yeghes da

 

[Thymallus]

Yes I'm beginning to wonder if that might be the problem. I also suspect putting a different type of queen into an established colony is causing me problems.

Nope it's not the problem. Bees from different countries do fine in the UK. But I have found local bee's quite difficult to re-queen, particular full hives. As I now keep so few locals (rubbish in my area) it's no longer a problem. Give me a decent pedigree bee any day over the mongrels.

 

[Tremyfro]

Just keep them up your end of the Bristol Chanel please!!!


Yeghes da

....but would Coco approve or would she think Bristol was deprived?

 

[Beecarer]

Hi Beecarer,
I read somewhere that in selecting a QC watch out for the large ones as in they are no good. Perhaps someone can expand on that advice. However, I have had two instances of single beautiful QCs and they were no good. One produced a queen that did not take colony through winter very well and withered away early spring. Second one from same genetic was dud. Keep a close eye to see if the Q emerges. Otherwise you might end up with a bunch of emergency cells!

Its difficult to say, in any supercedure that Ive watched closely the first queen out is from a big long cell and the smaller sealed queen cells have holes in the sides of them. What you could do is take a selection of cells from a swarming / supercedure hive and put them into some apideas, if they all get mated successfully and you use them to re-queen hives you could see if there was any difference, you would have to repeat this many times to make 'definite' conclusion.

 

[beeno]

Hi Beecarer,
It was not my conclusion, but someone else's. Just wanted someone to bring some substance to the claim. However, I will stay away from the most perfect looking QC's from now on as they have fooled me twice.

 

[Obee1]

Nope it's not the problem. Bees from different countries do fine in the UK. But I have found local bee's quite difficult to re-queen, particular full hives. As I now keep so few locals (rubbish in my area) it's no longer a problem. Give me a decent pedigree bee any day over the mongrels.

My problems have been getting large local queens colonies to accept the pedigree queens I bought in.

 

[Obee1]

I have a bill for 566euros for mine but they're worth every penny (cent) !

I assume they will produce many daughters that you can sell on for a profit