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Capped Queen Cells

17K views 27 replies 9 participants last post by  Tom Fran 
#1 ·
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!
 
#15 ·
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.
 
#16 ·
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.
 
#18 ·
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?
 
#19 ·
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.
 
#21 ·
Swarm splits: the whole idea is to simulate a swarm so that the bees believe the swarm has left. Take the old queen along with a couple frames of brood/bees and a frame of honey and a frame of drawn or foundation and start a new hive in a nuc box or spare hive body. Leave ALL the swarm cells with the original hive so they can continue raising a new queen, although you could use a couple of the swarm cells for requeening or other splits, but leave plenty of them for the original hive. If you don't take the old queen out of the hive, take a guess as to what will happen; they will still swarm! When they leave (which they do 99.999% of the time, when you do it incorrectly) you need a new queen in the original split that you made incorrectly and a new queen in the original hive. If you do it correctly you still have the original queen to use as a replacement if the swarm cells aren't successful. Hope this makes sense! ;)
 
#27 · (Edited by Moderator)
Not really. Some of my hives aren't strong enough to worry about swarming right now. I have other hives that I know I'm going to split in the next week or two (if they have swarm cells then that is great as they are further along and will have less of a delay in build-up).

So the colonies that I'm worried about are my production colonies. We are starting to get a flow here, so I will make sure that I'm checking them regularly to keep them from being honey bound and making sure that there is plenty of room for the queen to continue to lay. Since we basically rely on June for our honey crop (and possibly May and August for bonus crops), I want my production colonies to be packed with bees by May, but still be raising brood until June.

What I'm getting at is that I have a pretty good idea of what's happening in my colonies. I don't have to check for swarm cells in my hives because I try to take steps to prevent them swarming. Have I been surprised and had colonies swarm? Uh huh... But I think I'm getting better at managing my colonies and detecting the signs of swarming behavior.
 
#28 ·
Very good tips here. Hive management is so important.

But, before you can become a good "hive manager," you have to come here and get knowledge, and that is what I'm trying to do. You all have helped me immensely!

Some people are fortunate to have mentors. All of you on this site are my mentors. :), and I am grateful to you!
 
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