Queen swarm cell on newly received nuc

[shinbone]

Hi All,

After a 35 year hiatus in beekeeping, I ordered two nucs and picked them up this weekend. One of the nucs appears to be a really robust and active hive. It consisted of 4 frames in a 5 frame nuc box. The bees had built some comb in the gap between two of the frames and filled it with honey. I didn't do a careful inspection since I was working fast to quickly transfer the frames from the nuc into the new hive body, but I did noticed a sealed queen cell on the bottom of one of the frames.

BTW, my 83-year old neighbor watched the process and pointed out the queen to me while I was transferring frames, so I know the colony is currently queen right.

Should I be worried about this newly installed hive swarming? If there is a likelihood of it swarming, is there anything I can do stop it? Am I correct in thinking that a 4 frame hive may be too small to split?

http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r...2/f2c93803.jpg

Thanks!

--shinbone

[suburbanrancher]

Hopefully someone with more experience will chime in here but it may actually be a supercedure cell and not a swarm cell.
From what I've read, if they're planning to swarm the queen slows down her egg laying and they backfill the brood nest with nectar, also there are usually a lot of swarm cells.
Did you just see one queen cell?

[shinbone]

suburbanrancher - Thanks for the reply. The queen cell was located at the bottom of the frame, which I thought was the usual place for a swarm cell. I hope you are correct and it is a supercedure cell rather than a swarm cell. Like I imiplied above, since I am a new beek, I have no resources to deal with a hive about to swarm - I have no drawn comb, no extra brood, and no extra bees to be dividing up into more hives to ward off a swarm.

BTW, I should have mentioned in my original post, that this hive had been in the nuc for a few months, so this is not a newly introduced queen. There was about a half-a-frame of brood, and the brood pattern look good to me - nice and solid with no gaps. Additionally, the queen was quite active when I saw her. She was quickly darting about in little spurts of motion.

[Greg Lowe]

I picked up a nuc with 2 queen cells mid frame. Gave it a few days and found new eggs and 2 chewed q cells. I would recommend just watching to see what happens. Your 4 frame nuc should be bursting at the seams in no time.

[CesarBeeCool]

I'm no pro, but I don't think you have to worry about one qc. I guess it is multiple qc's is when you worry. From what I've read and seen in posts on this site up to 6-7 qc's can mean they will supercede the queen and from 6-12 means the hive wil swarm, or is about to swarm (those are rough numbers). You could put her in a separate nuc/box with some bees and frames and see what happens.

[suburbanrancher]

"Darting about in little spurts of motion," hmmmm. To get the queen to lose some weight and prepare for flight, her attendants will bite and chase her to make her burn some of that weight.

Hopefully someone more wise will check in here!

[shinbone]

Just in case it is important, I will also mention that within minutes after transferring the frames into the new hive body, there were a lot of bees (for a 4 frame hive) in front of the hive orienting, and within 30-45 minutes the hive had alot of bees foraging. I am very pleased with how quickly this hive moved into its new digs and got to work.

BTW, I saw only one queen cell, but I didn't spend much time looking for queen cells. I suppose if there were a lot of queen cells, I would have noticed them, though.

suburbanrancher - interesting comments on the forced weight-loss program.

Considering my non-existent resources, I think my only option is to wait and see. It is good to hear that some people are saying that is the best thing to do for now anyway.

[shinbone]

Interestingly, 24 hours after hiving, the hive with all the activity has settled down to a normal level of activity for a four frame hive.

I have screened bottom boards with white plastic trays for both hives. I coated each tray with cooking oil, and will do a 24 hour mite drop check tomorrow. I will also check how much sugar water they have taken at that time.

[shinbone]

Well . . . the odd queen cell is now the least of my worries:

I came home yesterday afternoon (2 days after installing the nucs) to see that the stronger (about 2 frames of bees) hive was robbing the weaker (about 1 frame of bees) hive. It took me about 10 minutes of observation to figure out what was going on, but after the bees got aggressive with me and followed and stung my dog a few times, I concluded that there was robbing. I didn't see any fighting, but there was a frenzy of activity in the air in front of the weak hive.

I completely blocked the entrance of the victim hive by rotating the entrance reducer so there was no opening exposed. This caused lots of bees to pile up on the landing board.

I then opened each hive one after the other. Things seemed to be relatively calm inside the victim hive as well as inside the aggressor hive. I noticed that each hive had taken up about a cup of the syrup mixed with Honey Bee Healthy from the Collins feeders inside each hive. I also inspected the white boards at the bottom of each hive for mites. I then closed everything up, and, by then the robbing attempts/activity had stopped and the traffic in front of the victim hive seemd to be back to normal. I re-opened the victim hive and reduced its entrance to about 3 bees wide. I also reduced the entrance of the aggressor hive to the same width. I then went inside to do some internet research on robbing and how to stop it.

3 hours later I returned to the hives right at sunset. I further reduced the entrance to the victim hive to 2 bees wide, and removed the Collins feeder. I put the Collins feeder inside the aggressor hive which now has two Collins feeders full of syrup and HBH. I opened the entrance of the aggressor hive back to the normal "narrow" setting of the entrance reducer.

This morning I ordered a robbing screen from Brushy Mountain, which should arrive tomorrow and will be installed that evening. Untill then, I guess I can only keep my fingers crossed that the robbing won't resume. I am at work now (and left home before sunrise), and won't be able to check on the hives until the end of today. If the robbing restarts while I am at work, I will probably have a dead or doomed hive by the time I get home. Hopefully, the reduced entrance and the lack of syrup and HBH in the victim hive will stop the robbing and things will be okay until the robbing screen shows up.

The weaker hive had 2 mites drop in 24 hours and the stronger hive had 3 mites drop in the same time. My understanding is that there are too many variables for absolute mite drop numbers to have much meaning and that it is trends that I should be watching. I made a note of the numbers in my bee journal for future reference.

[shinbone]

This thread has drifted from the original topic, but for those still following:

I arrived home yesterday afternoon at 5:00 PM, and was relieved to see that both hives had a normal amount of bee activity in front of them. In other words, it appears that removing the sugar syrup with HBH in it and reducing the entrance down to 2 bees wide stopped the robbing. Hopefully the queen survived the robbing incident and the hive did not receive much damage. I don't want to disturb this hive for awhile, so I will just hope for the best and will look for the queen in another 7 - 10 days.

Once I install the robbing screens (on order from Brushy Mountain), I will put the sugar syrup with HBH in it back into the victim hive. I need to get that sucker built up ASAP. BTW, here is a link to another design for a robbing screen: http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/facult...bingscreen.pdf

I will be picking up two more nucs this Saturday in Grand Junction, CO. I am thinking I will just start off with robber screens on them. I see no reason to chance another robbing incident when robbing screens are cheap and easy to use, and reportedly effective, especially with brand new and likely relatively weak nucs.

[fieldsofnaturalhoney]

Shinbone,
From the looks of the tap on the nucs, you got them from the same place as I did last Saturday. I left my bees in the nuc until this weekend and transfered them. Out of the three, One had a supercedure queen cell, it was in the middle of the frame. One, had lots of brood, bees, and no queen cells. It is the third I am most worried about. Eaten most of the stores, only two frames of bees, little to no brood. I will keep a close eye on them, and add eggs/larvae/nurse bees from another hive if/when needed.
Question? did your nucs have these plastic square queen cages I guess?, or maybe they were to protect grafted cells? If they did. any idea what those were?

[shinbone]

fieldsofnaturalhoney - PM sent.

[Red_SC]

Nice Scout in the background, by the way! That's another of my interests.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...cks/small1.jpg

[shinbone]

Sweet machine! Is that a 1980 with the square headlights?

Mine is a 1973 with a 1979 engine, and it still runs like a Swiss watch!

[Red_SC]

It is, it has around 350K miles and finally needs a new carb, the motor's never been touched. It was my first truck.

I wonder if the HBH in the feed contributed to the robbing.

[shinbone]

Yours is one of the nicest Scouts I've seen. BTW, if the truck is in as good of shape as it looks, I consider going to fuel injection instead of a new carb.

From what I have read on Bee Forum, I am sure the HBH contributed to the robbing. these are my first hives, and I want to build them up as fast as possible so I would like to feed them syrup to stimulate comb building, and I have heard HBH contributes to fast take-up of syrup, but inciting robbing is counterproductive to a fast biuld-up.

I am thinking of switching to just sugar syrup and leave out the HBH. Take up would be slower but there would be less chance of robbing. Once the nucs were strong enough to defend themselves, then I could resume with HBH or maybe just stop feeding at that point.