Swarm preparations or supersedure?

[MattC]

Active colony with 9 frames bias and a load of uncharged queen cups along the top and sides of the frames, and also a single queen cup with egg in the middle of a frame located on the edge of the brood area. Suspect the queen to be over 3 years old.

I'm wandering if this might be supersedure- seems to fit descriptions I've read- but never having seen it before, I'm not sure.

Think I'll watch and wait- check again in 3-4 days- but wondering if there anything to lose by doing AS anyway on a superseding colony?

Presumably you can combine the colonies later with the new queen at its head without loss of bees. I'd guess there'd be some disruption to the colony/loss of honey production, but if you're not sure whether swarm or superseding in the first place, this might be better than the loss of a swarm if you've made the wrong call.

Sorry, I know the swarm vs supersedure discussion comes up frequently on here, but does anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

If they are superseding it will probably be because the queen is failing - is there any evidence of this? (laying rate reducing, a lot of drone brood etc?) do you really want to split the hive then, with the chance of a failed queen in one and an unmated virgin in the other? By your description it sounds like supersedure, but you can never tell with the bees! so I would just let them get on with it.

 

[MattC]

More drone brood so far this year than the last 2 years, but seems to be laying well at the moment- plenty of worker brood too.

 

[beeno]

Hi MattC,
Good idea to keep an eye on that lot! Nine frames of brood hardly failing. Have you got super on and has she got enough space to lay in the brood nest? I would have thought swarm cells coming up!

 

[Skyhook]

Cups don't count, even with eggs in. God idea to keep a close eye on any and every colony at this time of year, but no call to split colonies if you don't need to, especially with temperatures as low as they are.

If you are going to split, better to do so with a big fat charged swarm cell than let them raise an emergency queen.

.

 

[beeno]

Hi Skyhook,
We are having three days of summer near London and stacks of pollen going in. Apparently, there is a flow on, but mine as usual are putting it all into brood.

 

[MattC]

Well, I checked again last week to find the original 'supersedure' cup had been emptied of its egg- but there were a load more cups elsewhere, several of which had eggs inside. Left alone. Then checked again today to find all cups empty, but a single new charged queen cell poking off the bottom edge of a frame.

So I attempted A/S, only to cack-handedly squash the queen cell in the process of shifting frames around. *!*%!

Given that there was only one properly charged QC, I guess it could have been supersedure after all. Left the hive split so the queenless part can hopefully raise emergency queen, not sure whether this was right but anyway it's done now...