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  • From: Marty Hanks <marty AT justbeenc.com>
  • To: Robyn Holmes <whatbirdsplungethrough AT yahoo.com>, Orange County Bees <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] newbee question: queen cell in a new hive?
  • Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:18:38 -0400

Hi Robyn,
 
that does souond weird, but i will have to say i have seen this twice now this year. i agree w/ your read on there being room to grow and "almost" 100% of the time swarm cells are at the bottom of the frames...so you are also right in my opinion that they...for some reason...want a new queen but are most liely not looking to swarm.
 
in the one hive i saw this in the new queen ~4 weeks old was laying in a random and small pattern..so NOT a good layer at all...BUT they had at least 6-7 new queens cells going at once. SO we just let them replace her.
 
now back to you and what the heck to do....if im "assuming" that a "3 week hive" means a package just installed and the brood pattern looked tight and the eggs you could see were only single eggs per cell then i'd take off the cell and see what happens. sometimes in this situation the queen will get a late start and maybe trigger a reaction like this...again doesn't sound like it....but w/ brood about to pop you should be all fine moving forward. Its the one cell that a bit weird.
 
one other idea is to remove the cell then rotate the outside 2 frames in one. so #'s 1 & 10 go to 2 & 9 and they get pushed out. i would also add a new box above in a week and check back in. Just make sure there are no other cells hiding....you may have to move the bees around a bit. a gintle smoke is good or your finger if your brave enough yet.
 
good luck,
marty hanks
just bee

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 3:52 PM, Robyn Holmes <whatbirdsplungethrough AT yahoo.com> wrote:
Hi everyone!

My workers are making/tending a queen cell right in the middle of one of the middle frames in my 3-week-old hive. There is only one. Should I be concerned about this? Obviously my queen is laying, there's tons of brood at different stages. Could they have decided they need a new queen anyway, or should I worry about swarming? They haven't even finished drawing comb on 2-3 of the outside frames, so it seems like they have plenty of room to grow.

Thanks a million,

Robin
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Marty Hanks
Just Bee, Apiaries
 
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