[ocba] Queen Cells

Randall Austin ra41717 at gmail.com
Tue May 8 14:35:52 EDT 2012


Tom,

Before panicking, I think we can get some reassurance from the math.

You installed the hive 3.5 weeks ago. It took a few days for the caged
queen to be released. It takes 21 days (3 weeks) to make a worker bee. So
if the queen was released and started laying 3 days after you installed the
hive, you should just now be seeing new bees (3 and a half weeks out). In
the meantime the package bees have been dying at a normal rate, something
like 3 to 4 percent of the population per day, assuming a 30-day worker
lifespan. So the hive shouldn't be too crowded yet (if you have
logical-minded, well-adjusted bees), since the population hasn't even
recovered to what it started with. As long as you have a reasonable amount
of empty comb, swarming shouldn't be at the top of your list of concerns
--- not yet.

If all that is true, then the queen cells you found were supercedure cells,
not swarm cells. That is most likely in this situation anyway --- it isn't
unusual for packages to try to replace their queen. If so, destroying the
queen cells didn't do any real harm. Unlike a swarming situation, the old
queen will still be there until the new queen has emerged and is ready to
go. In fact it is fairly common for the old queen and the replacement queen
to overlap for a while in the hive -- I have witnessed this in my own
hives. So, again, if this scenario is what is going on, you don't need to
panic. If you do try to introduce a new queen right now, she'll simply be
killed because the old queen is still there.

If your bees are bound & determined to replace the queen, you can simply
let them do it. Chances are the resulting queen will be just as good or
better than the mass-produced queen that came with your package. The new
queen will simply come in and replace the old one. You won't lose very much
momentum, which isn't the case with swarming. Be careful, though, because
capped queen cells are easily damaged when you pull frames in and out to
inspect them. If I know there is a queen cell on a frame, I mark it by
putting a thumb tack in the top bar and then I make sure I don't mess with
that frame or its 2 neighbors.

You should be able to learn to find the queen with practice. FIRST make
sure you are wearing a good pair of reading glasses --- for me, that's more
important than my smoker or hive tool! Don't use size as a guide. Your
Italian queen probably has a solid almond-colored abdomen --- your workers
do not. The top of the thorax of your queen is bald & shiny --- the top of
the thorax of your workers is fuzzy. Your workers scoot all over the frames
in different directions. Your queen (if you are lucky) plods along like a
plowhorse in a straight line, stopping every now and then to stick her head
into a cell to see if it is empty. Or she may be standing still, surrounded
by attentive workers like in a football huddle. It takes practice to pick
up on these cues but once you know what a queen does (and doesn't) look
like, it is easy. Unless she's hiding, which some queens love to do! One of
the things I learned early on is that if you have to ask, "Is that the
queen?" then it isn't. So don't waste time trying to decide if a particular
bee is the queen --- if you see her, you'll know!

Let us know how it turns out!

Randall Austin

.


On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 1:39 PM, Dan Kyburz <dkyburzus at gmail.com> wrote:

> Newbie giving his 2 cents, but I would…****
>
> **A)     **Make sure you can find a queen or at least eggs or have
> someone help you in locating them.  If not I would install a new queen
> since the queen cups were destroyed.  (Did they have eggs or royal jelly in
> them?)****
>
> **B)     **Possibly give them more room by adding another medium super on
> top.  Especially if you think there are questionably building swarm cells.
> Wasn’t sure which edge you are referring to.  I’ve found that I have waited
> to long to add more space.  You may also consider rotating your empty
> frames more inward.****
>
> ****
>
> Best of luck,****
>
> Dan****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* ocba-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:
> ocba-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] *On Behalf Of *Thomas Grizzle
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 08, 2012 1:16 PM
> *To:* ocba at lists.ibiblio.org
> *Subject:* [ocba] Queen Cells****
>
> ** **
>
> Hi All,****
>
> ** **
>
> Take everything I am about to say with a grain of salt.  A newbee is
> talking here.****
>
> ** **
>
> I am 3.5 weeks into installing a bee box and queen (from Busy Bee) into a
> single new 10-frame hive with nothing but foundation.  I fed them the
> equivalent of two 5 pound bags of sugar and stopped feeding them at that
> point.  Today I went into the hive to check it out.  ****
>
> ** **
>
> There appeared to be more bees than I installed, that’s the first thing I
> noted.  There is honey stored away on parts of a few frames, and capped
> brood were visible.  I find searching for a queen a hopeless endeavor.  It
> is like looking at a giant oak tree on a breezy day and trying to find the
> biggest leaf.  Ain’t gonna happen.  That aside, I went through all 10
> frames and found 4 queen cells, one in the middle of a frame, one more to
> the edge but not on the edge, and two on edges.  I destroyed all four.  Too
> late it occurred to me that I might have a failing queen and they were
> trying to “fix things.”****
>
> ** **
>
> There were still two frames with no comb drawn out, so they are not
> overcrowded.  My Chapel Hill site is in a neighborhood next to a rather
> large forest (for in-town), the American Legion woods…about 20 acres, I’d
> estimate, and there are poplar trees here I am certain.  Water is not a
> problem.  Anyway…****
>
> ** **
>
> What should I do?  Let them be(e) seems like the best option at this
> point. ****
>
> ** **
>
> Tom Grizzle****
>
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