View Full Version : Queen Cells on drone foundation
I am using a DE hive, second season. The foundation that comes with the shallow supers is drone size. I do not like using excluders and usually don't have any problems. The queen laid eggs in the honey supers so I finally broke down and put on the excluder. When I checked the hive today I found queen cells in the drone size foundation. I checked the brood chamber and found some eggs and young larvae. There were a couple of dry queen cups at the bottom of a few frames.
I am thinking it is time to replace this queen. Am I right? I destroyed the queen cells.
Michael Bush
06-21-2004, 08:58 PM
Maybe.
Probably the bees in the brood nest above the excluder decided they hadn't seen a queen and so they should raise one. I have had this happen when there is brood above and below an excluder.
You queen is probably fine. Bur if you think she isn't why destory the queen cell? Why not let them raise one?
I had the same problems with the DE hive. I didn't realize he was shipping me drone foundation and I didn't put the excluder on (as I usually didn't) and the queen layed a lot of drone. I went back to an excluder until I replaced all the drone foundation with some Rite Cell cut to fit the DE frames.
This hive is in my back yard. I don't want to take my chances of them turning mean on me with the local genetics. I had some nasty ones a couple of years ago that would wait for me to come outside 2 days after I opened the hive.
I am only using two brood chambers on the DE I ordered another deep and worker foundation for my supers last week but it still has not arrived. I had one super with worker comb that was not good enough to use as cut-comb last year. I put that on last week under the excluder and put the queen in the bottom deep for the second time. Of course she hasn't laid a single egg in it and now it is full of honey. Go figure.
Michael Bush
06-22-2004, 11:13 AM
I guess I've not seen that much difference in temprament between queens my bees raise and queens I buy. Either can be very gentle or mean but most are pretty nice.
Do you think the bees carried eggs from below the queen excluder to make these queen cells, or were they unfertilized drone eggs?
Michael Bush
06-23-2004, 05:44 AM
Bees can tell the difference between workers and drones. They often remove drone eggs from worker cells when a queen is failing. I don't think they will build a queen cell with a drone egg.
Queens can, and do, bet through an excluder. It's just tight enough that they usually don't want to.
I don't know if they actuall move eggs or not. I've heard people speculate, but haven't seen that they acutally do.
My guess is that a queen laid it. I don't know the timing on everything that happened in you hive, but when you put the excluder in you separated a brood nest that was in the top (that you thought was all drones) from the main one in the bottom. I think the nurse bees in the top hadn't seen the queen and started a queen cell from a worker egg that was already there.
I wouldn't assume the queen is failing from that.