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  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Alicia Reenders <a.reenders AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] queen cups
  • Date: Mon, 09 May 2011 19:54:22 -0400

Alicia,

Queen cups look a bit like acorn caps. Some bees make queen cups just for the heck of it, without really intending to swarm. Look to see if there is royal jelly (and a larva) inside. If so, its a full-fledged queen cell and the bees are creating a new queen. That's usually the last thing you want to see this time of year --- swarming is not a good thing for beekeeping.

The hive has decided that it is going to swarm before they begin making queen cells. A queen cell just tells you that the process is underway. Once a queen cell is capped, the swarm is ready to go. They'll take off any time after that point, when the weather is right and everything else is bee-perfect. The swarm leaves with half or more of the worker bees and the old mother queen. Once the new queens begin emerging, there can also be secondary swarms or "after swarms" which take off in a similar way to a primary swarm.

If you are convinced that your hive is planning to swarm and you want two hives, you can go ahead and split them yourself before the bees do. Take a few frames with eggs & brood (and the bees that are on them), plus a few frames of pollen and honey, and put them in a new hive. Take the hive with the old queen and move it to a new spot; take the hive without a queen (but with eggs/larva and/or queen cells) and put it in the old spot. A queenless hive that has very young brood or eggs will make a new queen. There are a lot of different tricks for splitting a hive; find a book or three that covers the basics and experiment. You won't get much honey from your split hives, but if the bees do swarm you won't get much honey and you will also have lost half your bees.

Good luck, have fun, don't be afraid to experiment, and let us know how it goes!

Randall Austin






On 5/9/2011 4:06 PM, Alicia Reenders wrote:
BANLkTimsS2ksymFPMp-HZSDyBXUvCkuhbA AT mail.gmail.com" type="cite">Hello everyone!

I have had an exciting 2nd year of beekeeping so far. I was sad I couldn't make it to the splitting workshop saturday, because I'm currently hoping to make a split soon. I've just been trying to read up on how to do it, but I'm not really confident. I plan on waiting until I have some closed queen cells and then divide frames between 2 hives.

I currently have 2 deep hive bodies, the top one full of capped honey and open nectar I guess? I also put a honey super on top, no drawn comb there and they haven't touched it.

The bottom one has tons of bees! 2 frames have pollen and nectar, one has honey. The others are all full with all stages of brood. I've already had one round hatch, and have lots of bees. I also have about 10 queen cups scattered throughout, and I spotted the queen again today.

My question is, can I assume that the queen will lay an egg in a queen cup before they swarm, and that I'll be able to check the cups every few days to catch this? And then, should I be able to wait until they close the queen cup and then go ahead and split the hive? Is there a good chance they'll swarm before that? If so, are there other folks out there selling queens that I could introduce? Busy Bee is booked until June.


Thanks so much for your help! Again, I wish I could have made it to the workshop. You probably answered most of these questions there.

Thanks for your help!

-Alicia
_______________________________________________ ocba mailing list North Carolina Beekeeping http://www.theocba.org/



  • [ocba] queen cups, Alicia Reenders, 05/09/2011
    • Re: [ocba] queen cups, Randall Austin, 05/09/2011

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