Workers moving queen larvae back into queen cells?

[tchu]

One of my colonies was queenless and had 5 open emergency queen cells. I destroyed the cell wax work of all 5 of them, killed one larva with the hive tool and scooped all the other 4 larvae out and left those larvae on somewhere around the lugs for the bees to cannibalise or kill or move them out of the hive or whatever they wanted to do with them, and left those respective larvae’s royal jelly inside their original queen cells for the workers to consume/feed other brood or whatever else they wanted to do with it.

About 3 days later when I opened that hive not only did the bees rebuilt the exact same queencups I had torn down but seemed to have put the same age larvae back in - not sure if the same ones I had put on the lugs or ones from other worker cells. I didn’t know they could do that. So this time round I made sure I took the jelly out and destroyed the larvae that were in.

Curious if anyone had the same experience?

 

[jeff33]

Curious if anyone had the same experience?

Probably not because no one (unless intoxicated) would have the idea of doing such thing, especially removing all EQCs if the hive is queenless.

 

[madasafish]

Why did you remove all QCs?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

this is all very surreal

 

[jeff33]

I just keep being bemused to see that some people use bees like a lab experiment. They are livestock and should be treated with the same respect and welfare as any other livestock.

 

[Erichalfbee]

One of my colonies was queenless and had 5 open emergency queen cells. I destroyed the cell wax work of all 5 of them, killed one larva with the hive tool and scooped all the other 4 larvae out and left those larvae on somewhere around the lugs for the bees to cannibalise or kill or move them out of the hive or whatever they wanted to do with them, and left those respective larvae’s royal jelly inside their original queen cells for the workers to consume/feed other brood or whatever else they wanted to do with it.

About 3 days later when I opened that hive not only did the bees rebuilt the exact same queencups I had torn down but seemed to have put the same age larvae back in - not sure if the same ones I had put on the lugs or ones from other worker cells. I didn’t know they could do that. So this time round I made sure I took the jelly out and destroyed the larvae that were in.

Curious if anyone had the same experience?

So I’ll ask as well. Why did you take all the QCs out? Are you requeening with a mated queen.

 

[tchu]

All the emergency queen cells were taken out because the plan is to do the “patch method” with genetics from my best queen. So I need them queenless and with no emergency queen cells first before a I introduce an egg/young larva comb cutout from my other colony.