Capped Queen Cells

[Tom Fran]

How long does it take for a queen to emerge from a capped queen cell? I thought that I read or heard somewhere that it could be only hours away.

Thanks!

[AR Beekeeper]

A queen cell is capped for 7 1/2 days and then the virgin emerges.

[Tom Fran]

So, if you spot one of these and put it in a nuc along with some brood and honey, you could have a laying queen in a couple of weeks?

[heaflaw]

Check out Michael Bush's website. He has a description of how to tell the age of a queen cell by the capping.

[Rader Sidetrack]

MB's "Bee Math" page is the one with info on aging of queen cells:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm
near the bottom of the page.

[Tom Fran]

Thanks, guys. I do appreciate the help!

[rkereid]

So, if you spot one of these and put it in a nuc along with some brood and honey, you could have a laying queen in a couple of weeks?

Don't forget to add the bees along with the brood.

[Tom Fran]

I put 2 frames in the nuc. One with the queen cells and one with brood. Do you think that's enough? It's a 5 medium frame nuc.

[heaflaw]

I usually don't add brood. Just a cup or so of bees, a little honey and a lot of pollen. I feed sugar water for a couple of weeks til I check on the queen and go from there. The nuc does get off to a slow start but it will do well it if a flow is upcoming.

[rkereid]

The brood will help the population stay up. The smaller the nuc is, the more you should watch it for issues, especially if there is no flow going on. I find that 3 or 4 frame medium nucs do best for me.

Around here, we get a lot of robbing when the stonger hives are not busy with incoming nectar. I use robber screens on all my nucs.

[Tom Fran]

I actually have 5 frames in the nuc, but only 2 with bees. The other frames have starter strips.

[mbcpa]

I put 2 frames in the nuc. One with the queen cells and one with brood. Do you think that's enough? It's a 5 medium frame nuc.

Won't the bees left in the old hive still swarm?

[Tom Fran]

I hope not!

[honeyman46408]

How many cells was there? If there were several they will probably still swarm, once they have decided to swarm its hard to stop but not impossable.

[Tom Fran]

There were several cells, and they were in the middle of the frame - not on the bottom.

So that would be a supersedure, right? So, if there were several cells, I should still be OK if they had a failing queen, because there are still cells left in there to replace her.

I actually need another queen for a hive that's gone queenless, so it was not just to stop a swarm.

[honeyman46408]

We make most of our splits from hives like that we take one frame with cells and fill the split (4frames) with brood and let them raise a queen, one thing to remember they can swarm more than once with a lot of cells in ahive and the cells DONT have to bee on the bottom of the frames.

[Tom Fran]

Honeyman,

Thanks for the helpful information on how you do splits. I think I'll adopt your method.

It has to be kind of hard to prevent swarming unless you do hive inspections every couple of days.

[Tom Fran]

We make most of our splits from hives like that we take one frame with cells and fill the split (4frames) with brood and let them raise a queen,

Question: I only put 2 frames of bees in my nucs. If I add some more frames of bees to fill up these nucs, will it be a problem if the frames were from a different hive that the original first 2 frames that I placed into the nuc.

I know when you do a combine, you have to put newspaper in there, so the bees will not fight. I have often wondered when I've read where someone was advised to "shake some more bees into hive," why that wouldn't be a problem.

In one case you have to use newspaper, in another case - just shake them into a hive. Why is newspaper necessary in one scenario, but not in another?

[honeyman46408]

When we go into a yard we look for a hive with cells taking frames with cells (bees and all) we put them in seperate nuc boxes then finish filling the boxes with frames of brood and bees from the hives without cells and if nessary shake a few frames of bees in to make sure there are enough bees to cover the brood. You have created a state of confussin with the bees (which are mostly nurse bees) that they will bee more apt to keep the brood warm and not fight.

[Tom Fran]

Thanks a lot for the info honeyman!