Icing Sugar
New Bee
One of my colonies has been slow to build up this year. A recent comb change didn’t speed things up. Yesterday I found some supersedure cells in the brood box, on the brood area periphery. The workers must want a new queen who should hopefully be a more prolific layer. I thought I would take some pictures and, still being a beginner, use this as an opportunity for some personal revision. If any of my comments below are incorrect then I would be grateful for any corrections.
PICTURE ONE shows a single supersedure cell near the top of a frame. PICTURE TWO shows it to be positioned on the end of a “standoff” which will ensure that the supersedure cell is suitably suspended between combs. Furthermore, the comb immediately below it has not been fully drawn up, thereby leaving a recess for it to develop in. Neither of these features would be seen with an emergency queen cell. By the time the supercedure cells have become goblet-shaped, they typically contain an egg or larva.
PICTURE THREE shows three supersedure cells positioned tightly next to each other in a slightly more central position on the frame. They are often next to each other like this. These ones were built upon “insurance cups” that were made as the foundation was being drawn up and therefore, unlike emergency cells, you can see the foundation at the bottom of the cells because it is not obscured by the bend in a converted worker cell nor is it completely obscured by the copious royal jelly used to float the former worker larva into a better position. As you can see in PICTURE FOUR, worker bees have started to put royal jelly into the top supersedure cell (in a c-shape from about 4 o’clock to 10 o’clock) which also contains an egg, and the middle supersedure cell has an egg (at about 10 o’clock) and a little bit of royal jelly (5 o’clock).
You might typically find three or four supersedure cells in a brood box, all essentially of the same age. On at least one frame somewhere in the brood box, you would expect to find one day-old eggs in normal worker cells because there should still be an egg-laying queen in residence, albeit one that the workers want to replace. None of the tell-tale signs of a growing urge to swarm should be evident in the bees or on the frames (e.g look at the paucity of bees in all the photos).
If you find supersedure cells then do not perform an artificial swarm: simply leave everything alone for the old queen to be replaced by a new one. The workers will keep hold of the old queen for as long as possible but they will kill her if she attempts to interfere with the supersedure process. All the new queens hatch at roughly the same time but only one will survive to mate. It would not be unreasonable to keep the brood box closed for a whole four weeks when supersedure cells are first seen, after which you would hope to find a new queen laying at a prolific rate to compensate for the likely transient gap in egg laying during the supersedure process.
I suppose that I could put the single supersedure cell into a nuc if I wanted to, either for “insurance” purposes or some other reason.
Perhaps a more expert beekeeper could answer a couple of questions:
Question 1: I used two brood boxes when doing the comb change, separated by a queen excluder, so that new workers from the pre-existent brood could emerge. I put a couple of drawn frames into the new box (which was placed on top of the old box for a bit of extra warmth) for the queen to lay eggs on straight away. Nonetheless, because the workers were slow to draw up the foundation on the other frames, the comb change probably created a transient lull in egg laying: might this have acted as yet another stimulus for supersedure?
Question 2: If, during the entire lifetime of a good performing queen, I had the choice between a putting a single swarm cell or a single supersedure cell from it into a nuc, would one of these options hold distinct advantages over the other in terms of the likely swarminess or other characteristics of the progeny? Obviously, from a simple genetic perspective one would have to say that there would be no difference between either cell type. However, is there any evidence that “epigenetic” factors come into play?
PICTURE ONE shows a single supersedure cell near the top of a frame. PICTURE TWO shows it to be positioned on the end of a “standoff” which will ensure that the supersedure cell is suitably suspended between combs. Furthermore, the comb immediately below it has not been fully drawn up, thereby leaving a recess for it to develop in. Neither of these features would be seen with an emergency queen cell. By the time the supercedure cells have become goblet-shaped, they typically contain an egg or larva.
PICTURE THREE shows three supersedure cells positioned tightly next to each other in a slightly more central position on the frame. They are often next to each other like this. These ones were built upon “insurance cups” that were made as the foundation was being drawn up and therefore, unlike emergency cells, you can see the foundation at the bottom of the cells because it is not obscured by the bend in a converted worker cell nor is it completely obscured by the copious royal jelly used to float the former worker larva into a better position. As you can see in PICTURE FOUR, worker bees have started to put royal jelly into the top supersedure cell (in a c-shape from about 4 o’clock to 10 o’clock) which also contains an egg, and the middle supersedure cell has an egg (at about 10 o’clock) and a little bit of royal jelly (5 o’clock).
You might typically find three or four supersedure cells in a brood box, all essentially of the same age. On at least one frame somewhere in the brood box, you would expect to find one day-old eggs in normal worker cells because there should still be an egg-laying queen in residence, albeit one that the workers want to replace. None of the tell-tale signs of a growing urge to swarm should be evident in the bees or on the frames (e.g look at the paucity of bees in all the photos).
If you find supersedure cells then do not perform an artificial swarm: simply leave everything alone for the old queen to be replaced by a new one. The workers will keep hold of the old queen for as long as possible but they will kill her if she attempts to interfere with the supersedure process. All the new queens hatch at roughly the same time but only one will survive to mate. It would not be unreasonable to keep the brood box closed for a whole four weeks when supersedure cells are first seen, after which you would hope to find a new queen laying at a prolific rate to compensate for the likely transient gap in egg laying during the supersedure process.
I suppose that I could put the single supersedure cell into a nuc if I wanted to, either for “insurance” purposes or some other reason.
Perhaps a more expert beekeeper could answer a couple of questions:
Question 1: I used two brood boxes when doing the comb change, separated by a queen excluder, so that new workers from the pre-existent brood could emerge. I put a couple of drawn frames into the new box (which was placed on top of the old box for a bit of extra warmth) for the queen to lay eggs on straight away. Nonetheless, because the workers were slow to draw up the foundation on the other frames, the comb change probably created a transient lull in egg laying: might this have acted as yet another stimulus for supersedure?
Question 2: If, during the entire lifetime of a good performing queen, I had the choice between a putting a single swarm cell or a single supersedure cell from it into a nuc, would one of these options hold distinct advantages over the other in terms of the likely swarminess or other characteristics of the progeny? Obviously, from a simple genetic perspective one would have to say that there would be no difference between either cell type. However, is there any evidence that “epigenetic” factors come into play?
