Queen cell Question

[R.L. Bee]

Today I went into the Swarm hive that I caught on 3-31 found about 3 capped queen cells .I have two medium supers on now. The bottom one has a lot of capped brood and larva the second one has some honey and pollan stores but is fairly open I moved two frames of capped brood up and moved two of the fairly empty frames down to there places. I know if the cells are swarm cells that it probably wont help , I figured it wouldn't hurt. I am going to add another medium is there any thing else I can do.

[peggjam]

You can take the frames with the queen cells and the bees adhering to them and make a nuc, just be sure the queen isn't on one of them. You can keep it for an emergancey queen, or increase, or recombine them after a few weeks.

[iddee]

You may want to leave at least one q-cell in the box. A swarm will quite often replace the swarm queen shortly after getting established. It may be a normal supercedure.

[R.L. Bee]

One of the cells that is capped is a cell that I added a few days after I hived the swarm. In hopes of getting a better queen.I have checked it and it was uncapped about a week after I added it.Now it's capped again. Do queens commonly lay in old queen cells to produce a new queen.Also two of the cells are on the bottom of the frame all seam to be the same age, I believe I read somewere that cells built on the bottom of the frame are swarm cells does this always hold true?

[peggjam]

"I believe I read somewere that cells built on the bottom of the frame are swarm cells does this always hold true?"

Pretty much, yes.

[Michael Bush]

>Now it's capped again.

Maybe the queen emerged and the lid just shut. Sometimes they look capped. When they are about to emerge the end gets papery and brown instead of waxy and white or yellow. After they emerge it often looks like they haven't. Sometimes I think the bees even reseal them to keep one virgin at bay until the one loose sorts things out and the bees decide who they want for a queen.

> Do queens commonly lay in old queen cells to produce a new queen.

Not that I've seen.

>Also two of the cells are on the bottom of the frame all seam to be the same age, I believe I read somewere that cells built on the bottom of the frame are swarm cells does this always hold true?

If all of them are on the bottom I figure they are swarm cells. If most of them are on the bottom I figure they are probably swarm cells. If they are everywhere including the bottom, I figure they are emergency cells.