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I have been going through my hives looking for swarm cells and I am noticing that one of my hives as many queen cells. Like at least 1 or 2 on each frame in the hive body. I was wanting to know, can I determine by the shape of a queen cell if she is going to be better than the other cell? On the same hive that I have all these queen cells I spent 2hrs trying to find the queen and all my other hives I have been able to find the queen in a few minutes.
Are you wanting to let them swarm and just limit the possibility of getting a poor queen, or are you wanting to split and use some of the cells to queen the split?
Oh yeah forgot to mention that I didnt find the queen but Im going back tomarow and searching for her again.
you probably wont find her, if you have capped queen cells the hive is ready to swarm or has already swarmed.
The queen will be much smaller than usual, more like a virgin so will be harder to see.
frazz
As to shape it's not a perfect guide but just go for the biggest. Also don't use any positioned where they might not have been kept totally warm, if there are any like that. eg bottom bar of bottom box, or similar.
Oldtimer is right... so is frazz... I cull anything that is excessively long (some crazy cells can reach two+ inches.. so you know there is something wrong there), and cull anything excessively short, although I will note that some times the stubby cells produce good sized queens, but can't imagine there having been much room for much jelly in there...
Cull the too big, the too small, and anything outside of the main brood area (like Oldtimer said)... you can usually find one or two that were central to the bulk of bees and the perfect size... these will usually be the keepers.
thanks for the info just what wanted to hear..