Need surefire way to tell difference between drone and queen cells.

**Sunnyside** · 08-10-2011, 08:11 AM

Any one able to point me to a great website with pictures? Or any great words of wisdom for me to differentiate between drone and queen cells? It seems each time I email my mentor pictures of what I am sure of is drone cells, he calms me down and let me know that they are drone cells!!! (I think I am driving him a bit crazy! LOL!)

Thanks so much!!!

**Vance G** · 08-10-2011, 08:22 AM

Think peanuts! A drone cell may rise above the surface of the rest of the brood because the pupae needs more room than the worker cell housing it will afford. That protuberance will be brown and stick straight out or nearly so. A queen cell will invariably hang down and have a surface that looks corrugated and just like a peanut. Google queen breeding and look at pictures of queen cells. Google honeybee swarmcells and look at that. Look up honeybee supercedure cell and look at those pictures. Once you get the difference it will be so very obvious. Now after saying all that, finding all the swarm cells to destroy to stop swarming is a high hurdle just becasue the bees can slip one by you with amazing regularity, probably because they may look more like a drone cell. Good luck in your search.

**SwedeBee1970** · 08-10-2011, 10:22 AM

Drone cells are usually many in a frame and are larger typical cells. Queens are usually just one at a time like described above.

**Kazzandra** · 08-10-2011, 10:41 AM

Some pictures to help with ID:

I had one supersedure cell that did not stick out at all-- it was placed in the bottom corner of a frame, and the queen was laying horizontally. It was very odd-- the only reason I went gunning for it with my hive tool was the "peanut" like pattern there. Glad I did, as that frame went into a split with a mated queen.

So I hope this helps. As a test, look at this pictures and see if you can identify the queen cups and the drone cells: