Strider94
06-04-2007, 07:42 PM
While working my stong hive this weekend I found a queen cell on a green plastic drone frame. There was a larva and some royal jelly in it. It was towards the bottom of the frame, but not hanging off of the bottom at all. This weekend I was transferring the whole hive from 2 standard deeps to a 22 frame deep 'combo box' so I took a few seconds to check every frame. I did not see any other queen cells, just some cups from earlier in the spring.
I am reasonably sure that I managed to keep ahead of them and kept them from swarming. I made sure they had enough space, and I pulled a few frames when I saw lots of 'idle' bees. I never saw any evidence of backfilling or any other queen cells larger than the cups. There has been a good amount of brood every time I checked the hive this year (every 7 to 14 days.)
They are getting a bit crowded again, but with a flow just starting I don't think that this is a bad thing. I put on 2 medium supers about 2 weeks ago and 2 more with undrawn frames this weekend.
So... did the queen lay a worker egg on a drone frame? Are they thinking about swarming? Is this a 'normal' superscedure? Or... are the bees confused and trying to superscede the queen with drone? :confused:
Since it was on a drone frame I went ahead and put it back in for now. Next week I may pull it and put it in a nuc box to see what happens. Any other ideas?
I am reasonably sure that I managed to keep ahead of them and kept them from swarming. I made sure they had enough space, and I pulled a few frames when I saw lots of 'idle' bees. I never saw any evidence of backfilling or any other queen cells larger than the cups. There has been a good amount of brood every time I checked the hive this year (every 7 to 14 days.)
They are getting a bit crowded again, but with a flow just starting I don't think that this is a bad thing. I put on 2 medium supers about 2 weeks ago and 2 more with undrawn frames this weekend.
So... did the queen lay a worker egg on a drone frame? Are they thinking about swarming? Is this a 'normal' superscedure? Or... are the bees confused and trying to superscede the queen with drone? :confused:
Since it was on a drone frame I went ahead and put it back in for now. Next week I may pull it and put it in a nuc box to see what happens. Any other ideas?