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  • From: Lewis Cauble <lewis AT hivebody.com>
  • To: NCBeekeepers Orange County <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Swarm Cells
  • Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 10:03:42 -0400 (EDT)

Catherine,
This is a great question and one that I think many beekeepers will be asking in the next couple of months as we move deeper in to swarm season.  I think the question we really need the answer to at the moment is "Did you see any brood?  Did you see eggs, uncapped brood, or capped brood?"  If all of these are absent, you have not had a laying queen for the last 21 days.  Now this does not mean that you do not have a queen in the colony.  If your hive has already swarmed, it will take the new queen a while (let's give a range of 31 to 45 days ) to emerge, mate, and begin laying.  This means you will have a period of at the very least 10 days where there will be no brood of any sort in your colony before you begin to see eggs from your new queen (my estimate of broodless days might be on the high side and I hope others will chime in if I am too far off base but I want to lean towards more to encourage folks to be patient).  This broodless period tends to make many beekeepers very nervous as they are convinced that there is not a queen in process.  In my limited experience the colonies have everything under control 5 out of 6 times.  Adding a purchased queen is never the correct thing to do in this situation in my opinion.
 
If I inspect a colony and I see no evidence of a queen, I like to place a frame of eggs in the suspect colony.  I come back 4 or 5 days later and look at that frame.  Are the bees pulling queen cells on that frame of eggs you gave them?  If yes, they need a queen.  If no, they have it handled.  This method is by far the most under utilized diagnostic tool available to new beekeepers.  It is a reliable method of determining if you have a queen in progress.  This assumes that you do not have laying workers.
 
The fact that the bees seemed grumpy and impatient can be a clue that they are queenless.  If I open a hive and see no evidence of a queen but the bees are mellow and going about their business, this tends to make me think everything is okay and that I need to be patient.  If I open the hive and they are immediately noisier than usual and much less patient, this is my clue to investigate a bit closer by looking for multiple eggs in cells or excessive numbers of drone cells (signs of laying workers). 
 
I would also add that in my experience, cutting queen cells does not pay off.  The bees have made a decision and they will eventually win this battle.  Use the queen cells to make a split.
 
Lewis
 

On March 31, 2014 at 2:13 PM catherinelguerrero AT gmail.com wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I have a question about how to deal with swarm cells. I have a hive that has both supercedure cells and swam cells. None of them are capped, and I can't tell if there are eggs in them. I am a little worries the hive may be queen less, because they are meaner then normal. I pulled the swam cells because the bees are downtown and I really don't want them to swarm. Should I have waited until they were capped to pull them? I have another hive with an uncapped swarm cell, but I haven't pulled it yet.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Catherine
>
> Sent from my iPhone
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  • Re: [ocba] Swarm Cells, Lewis Cauble, 04/01/2014

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