Lesson on queen cells

[iddee]

I have seen numerous posts about queens not laying a week or two after a swarm and swarm cells hatching. I started two nucs about 3 weeks ago. I checked them today and found in one, a golf ball sized area of eggs on one frame. The other I found 1/4 of one frame with empty cells that the light reflected off of, they were so well polished. It would have been very easy to miss that small area of eggs in the first hive, and there were no eggs in the second, only the highly polished, empty cells. Both hives had all frames very heavy with honey and pollen. Because of the small area of clean cells and the smaller area of eggs, I am confident that in a week or so, I will have two laying queens in two healthy nucs. Just thought I would give you an idea why so many have suggested wait another week for the new queen to start laying, and give you an idea of what to look for just before she begins laying. I hope this helps someone, it's the most typing I've done in a month. smile.gif

[peggjam]

Excellent post Iddee. Now go soak your fingers in some warm water and epson salts.LOL

[CWBees]

I agree made me reconsider removing the queen.

[FordGuy]

thanks iddee - I have a few queens that had me wondering - I will give them another week.

[Maine_Beekeeper]

Here's the story (so far) of my spring swarms.
As of yesterday, 6/2/06.
We have had five swarms here. (I got a little crazy with the pollen substitute and feeding in the late winter and BOOM - out comes the brood! wow.) We hived all five swarms (see post "swarm in a tree!")
So we get out our magazine articles and books and read up and we decide we need to requeen them all (dont' know if the queen will make it through mating flights, first swarms are going to supersceede the old queen, etc etc.) So we order 6 new queens (to requeen 4 of 5 swarms plus the parent colonies). Queens are confirmed by tracking number due to arrive today so last night we go down to check the swarms and kill the queens.
We know the first swarm should have a laying queen now (10-14 days to laying eggs and they swarmed on 5/18). We checked and it is in two deep boxes with 15 of 20 frames mostly drawn out and lots of syrup stored in the comb. In the first box we found perfect little pearl eggs - tiny little brandy-new ones and husband spots and catches the first queen - she's great looking. Big, healthy looking, wings aren't all tattered - she looks good. We decide we don't want to kill her so this will be the swarm where we keep the queen. Husband marks her and we move to the second swarm hive.
Swarm #2 is from 5/22/06. This one is also in two boxes - 17 of 20 frames are at least mostly drawn out. These guys are also storing syrup and a tiny little bit of pollen and lo and behold - in the top box on the westerly side we find eggs and the queen! On day 11! (we know this is a new queen because this is the second swarm from the same hive as the first.) We catch this queen also and what do we do now? kill her? That's what we came down here do do - but she's also great looking and we've got eggs so she's confirmed mated and doing fine. We can't kill this queen...
So the moral of the story is this. The plan now is to catch the queen in 4 of the 5 swarms (we're going to leave one swarm with thier swarm queen as experiment.) We'll re-queen the swarms with the new mated queens but first catch the swarm queens and make summer nucs. So we'll have 5 nucs with the swarm queens and one nuc with the last of the new queens. Kill potentially perfectly good queens? no way. Risk the hive with a poorly mated queen? maybe - but take these swarm queens and let them show their stuff in a little 5 frame nuc? Sure!
I feel a lot better knowing that I've got mated queens on the way to get these swarms on track - but that's not a great reason in my mind to kill these new superseedure queens - Keep 'em both, I say - and if a hive has a tough time we can give 'em a nuc.

[George Fergusson]

due to arrive today so last night we go down to check the swarms and kill the queens.

I never dequeen a colony until I have the replacement queen in-hand. Having your queens arrive on-time and dead happens often enough.