Supercedure Cells in TBH

[Daddy's Girl]

After three tries, I got a problem new package to accept a queen. The lady started laying immediately and vigorously and there's a lot of capped brood now.

Oh, and a visible queen cell developing on the observation window side of the hive.... It's not a practice cup, but one over an inch long that seems to be getting a lot of attention. I assume that they are trying to supercede and I'll leave them to it, but I wonder about it only because all the queen cells and practice cups I've seen in TBH are at the edge of the comb, and not in the middle as are more common in the Langs.

Comments? I'm curious.

[Michael Bush]

If you're sure they aren't trying to swarm, I'd leave things alone. If you think they are strong enough to swarm, then I'd do a split.

[Daddy's Girl]

The hive is only built out 10 bars, and there are empty bars available to build on to either side, so I am guessing that they do not like the current queen and mean to replace her for whatever reason. Shame, because she is laying very well and her laying pattern is very good. I am content to let them make their own decision about it, but I am also -very tempted to pull some bars from a different hive that is running out of room and start a top bar nuc.

If I find multiple queen cells on different bars, I may well do that, because the second hive won't suffer much if I pull a couple bars of brood from it. It also dawned on me that I could pull the laying queen(she's marked) and do a split with her.

[Michael Bush]

If you have the equipment and the bees doing a split with her should be educational. I've done that and most of the time she fails in a short amount of time and it turns out that I was wrong and the bees were right...

[Daddy's Girl]

In general, I think they are right. That bugs me because this particular hive took three tries to get them to accept a queen in the first place--and now the bees are superceding her because something apparently isn't right about her. It's been kind of an indictment of package/banked queens. :(

I'll see what it looks like and report the results. It will be a bit of education, since I've never done a split. :)

[Stevedore]

Sounds to me like you'd be better off replacing the ungrateful, snooty workers than than the queen. :)

Perhaps when you make the split the current nurse bees will chill and those that hatch out will be more appreciative of her efforts. Let the current flyers have their precious virgin.

[Ishi]

(That bugs me because this particular hive took three tries to get them to accept a queen in the first place)

Here lies your problem you have the wrong age of bees until you get the right mix they will try to re queen. You need mostly young bees to except a queen. If you have another hive do a split with the queen and see what happens. You can always combine if she fails in the split

[Stevedore]

I got this queen cell after I moved the comb up into a super.

http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/vv350/Stevedore_photos/SANY0531.jpg

There was nothing in it - I'm thinking they made it because the super was above top bars with just a few gaps between them and the queen's pheremones were harder to smell. I have heard of bees raising a second queen in the top box of a queenright colony when there were a few boxes between masking the scent.

Has anybody ever heard of bees moving a larvae into a queen cup rather than building it around them?

[Michael Bush]

>Has anybody ever heard of bees moving a larvae into a queen cup rather than building it around them?

Heard of the idea? Yes. Seen evidence of it? No. Heard any proof of it? No. Usually the queen lays in the cup that the workers built unless it's an emergency queen.