supercedure cells in new hive

[berkshire bee]

I installed 2 new packages side by side on april 14th. Went today to see if queens were laying. Both hives have good brood patterns and various stages of larvae. when pulling a few frames to check, I noticed that one hive had beginnings of 3 supercedure cells. Is that normal for a new package?

[MountainCamp]

Yes, it happens. They may have detected some fault with the new queen and are planning on superceding her, or they may just be belt and suspenders type colony.

I tend to let them correct themselves when this happens.

[berkshire bee]

Mountain Camp, Thanks again for your advice on both questions. After some thought and reading I realized that I would end up having to get the bridge comb out and switch the boxes. All of my other hives were such neat housekeepers, I had no trouble with them. I guess there's always one in the bunch

[Matt NY]

What kind of bees are they?

[peggjam]

Yes, it happens. They may have detected some fault with the new queen and are planning on superceding her, or they may just be belt and suspenders type colony.

I tend to let them correct themselves when this happens.

If I can't find anything physically wrong with the queen, and she's laying a good brood pattern, I tend to remove the queen to a nuc once the cells are capped. No sense wasting a good queen . If her brood pattern is spotty or there's something wrong with her, then I let the bees be.

[berkshire bee]

What kind of bees are they?

Italian Queens..that's amore'

[berkshire bee]

If I can't find anything physically wrong with the queen, and she's laying a good brood pattern, I tend to remove the queen to a nuc once the cells are capped. No sense wasting a good queen . If her brood pattern is spotty or there's something wrong with her, then I let the bees be.

Good advice. I'll keep a close eye on those cells and the brood pattern. I've always had good luck with packages from Betterbee

[MountainCamp]

[SIZE=3]There was something with the queen the colony did not like. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]It may be that she did not start laying well, but she has corrected that. If so, they will usually remove the queen cells before it is time to cap them.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]However, it may be something that is not obvious. It may be her pheromone levels, which can not be seen.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]You could remove her if they cap the queen cells and place her in a nuc, watch them and see if they try to replace her again. [/SIZE]

[Dave W]

MEDICATE w/ Fumidil-B when installing package bees, mix w/ 1:1 sugar-water. Minimum dose of 1 gal. 2 gal of medicated syrup are necessary when levels of Nosema in packages are high or when bees are confined for long periods after installation [Ref 12, p1103].
• Queens infected w/ Nosema has been shown to be responsible for considerable supersedure in package colonies [Ref 5, p360].

[HarryVanderpool]

After installation of package bees, it is common to find a ss-cell or three.
This normally has nothing to do with the queen, rather, the brood pherimones are out of ballance. There are lots of open brood cells and some getting sealed.
If you remove those cells, they will not reappear. This gives the colony enough time to get on their feet and then the impulse is over.
Unless YOU see a problem with the pattern, I would remove the cells.
This also happens in swarm installation on foundation.
Don't waste a good queen.

[BerkeyDavid]

INstalled 5 packages of Wilbanks italians on APril 19. Put them in 10 frame mediums with drawn comb and fed HFCS.

Today - 14 days after installation, I checked them to see if they needed more room. Most had at least 3 -4 frames of sealed brood and lots of bees.

One of them had 2 frames of brood with at least 3 sealed Q cells on each frame!

THese are some of the nicest fattest Q cells I have ever seen.

SO here is my predicament. If I take both frames of sealed brood out and make up 2 splits there will be no brood left behind.

The pattern isn't great, but it isn't too bad. This was the only hive that didn't take the pollen pattie. Just let it set there, although they did take syrup.

So should I take both frames of Q cells and do a 3 for 1, just take one frame, or let them all there and let the girls fight it out?

In reading the above advice I am tempted to just take the fattest Q cell for the split and let them supersede with the other.

[peggjam]

You could always cut the queencells out, and take a frame from each of the other hives to make splits with. If you do a one frame mating nucs to mate the extra queens with, then you'd have a few extra queens in case you need them...... .

[BerkeyDavid]

Thanks Peggjam, sounds like fun. I never tried that. Great idea!

[peggjam]

I think everyone should try this once in their life . Make sure the splits have a few extra bees to cover the ones that will go home .

[sierrabees]

If you remove the cells, put them in a nuc with enough bees to support them and the associated brood. That is just the reverse of what you were going to do with the queen, and you never can have too much insurance.

[BerkeyDavid]

Went out tonight to cut out the supersedure cells from the package I had hived on the 19th. I figured I had to get them out tonight as they technically could hatch tomorrow (16 days).

So first I swiped 2 frames of sealed brood with bees and 2 frames of honey, careful to avoid taking the queen with the frames, and placed them in a five frame nuc and closed it up to tide them over.

THen I opened up the package hive that had all the swarm cells. I started examining it very carefully, and realized that there was quite a bit of chalk brood! The pattern was pretty spotty, and the misses seemed to be mostly chalkbrood.

I am going back tomorrow to make sure it is not another disease, but I am almost certain that is what it is.

SO at first I thought, wow, better just take the honey and brood and bees back to their home. THen I figured, what the heck go ahead. Peggjam said it would be good experience! (and it was fun!. Next time I am going to try to rig up a way to melt some wax in the field as Langstroth suggests in the hive and the honeybee to help affix the Q cell better)

So I cut out 5 of the biggest and nicest Q cells, and then cut a spot for each cell in the brood comb. 3 in one, 2 in the other. Put the frames in 2 frame mating nucs, dumped in the bees and closed them up.

Now here is the question. Is chalkbrood or the ability to resist it genetic?

I had installed the packages in drawn comb from deadouts, and I am pretty sure that they must have just been overwhelmed from lots and lots of spores of chalkbrood from the old hive. From what I have read, it is not genetic but comes from spores.

So my plan is to watch and see if the Q's hatch and then see if they have chalkbrood.

And I plan to remove the package from that hive, bees, queen and all, leave all the brood behind, and put them in a five frame nuc with new frames and foundation, feed them and let them start over, and burn the old frames to try to get rid of the spores.

If this works, do you think I will be ok to use the new queens? Or is it still too risky to mess with them since they may be carrying a gene that makes the larvae less able to fight off the chalkbrood?

If either the new queens or the old rehived package has chalkbrood then I will be very tempted to just pinch them all. And since I have other splits and nucs in the yard I don't want their drone genes flying around so until I know I plan to cut out their drones too.

Any thoughts? Maybe I should have reposted this in Queen breeding, but I thought I would just carry on with the report.

[peggjam]

I have always requeened, and it goes away. But as Peter Borst pointed out, it may just as well be caused by stress as genetics, so if I have another case of it I will watch and wait. That would be what I would do now, if for no other reason than to make it right in my own mind that requeening is the proper treatment for chalkbrood. I would suggest you wait and see what happens.

[Lively Bee's]

I have 20 queens that came from koehnen 6 of them have set ss cell. The queens have nice tight patterens filling about 99% of the open holes on one side of a frame.

So I pulled the ss cells out along with 1 frame of brood from that hive and one from another hive and I made 2 frame spilt.

All 6 splits came out fine with the ss cell queen. The six hives that started the ss cell have not started any more ss cell I fell it was maybe do to a delay in the queen laying or maybe the smell did not suit them to start with.