worker bees tearing down queen cells

[Gerry99]

I hope someone may be able to give me some advice. We had an unexpected swarm yesterday. Fortunately our queen was clipped so we did not lose half the colony and we recovered it. Our queen has been a very prolific one and when we went into the hive yesterday found a few queen cells which we broke down but there was one farme with two very good looking sealed cells, back to back on either side of one frame.

We decided to create a nuc, but ony had the original colony transit box so used that. As we already had a nuc box kit i spent this moring building it as it is more substantial than the transit box. We decided to move the nuc into the newly constructed nuc box and during the process noticed the nurse bees were tearing down both queen cells!

is this normal? has anyone expereinced it before and if so what does it mean?

Any help or advice would be welcome - we were expecting tohave to do an atrificial swarm sometime this year but not so early on

many thanks in advance

 

[oliver90owner]

Not sure about this one.

Location?

You say you recovered the swarm? What do you mean by that? I would be surprised, if that were the case, unless there was a queen present.

Which makes me think you have a queen in the nuc. That being the reason for tearing down the queen cells.

RAB

 

[richardbees]

Gerry

If they're tearing down the Q cells it means there's already a Q

I'm confused, if you had a clipped Q didn't you notice Q cells?

richard

(PS - I'm often confused this time of night after a few Carlsbergs)

 

[Gerry99]

The clipped queen is back in the original hive, we put the frame with the queen cells, brood and food and shook bees in as well and we hecked today and no queen in the nuc and we are as confused but without the carlsburg

 

[Tom Bick]

At a guess did you by chance shake the bees off the frame with the two queen cells on

 

[Gerry99]

no we left well alone there, we shook bees off the other frames into the nuc

 

[Tim1606]

Is there the possibility that a virgin queen has hatched out and you haven't noticed it?

 

[Gerry99]

Mmmmmm good point! We obviously need to do another inspection but are reluctant to do so given all the upheaval they have had these past couple of days. Any suggestions as to how long we should leave them to settle down before we go back in?

And thanks to everyone fortheir help and insight to date