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What kind of cells are these?

4K views 15 replies 6 participants last post by  JRG13 
#1 ·
Can't find a queen in my cutout that I hived 2 weeks ago. I had seen her about 5 days after the cutout, but now I can't see eggs, and this is what I am seeing. Are these emergency cells?
They seem quite small.



 
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#3 ·
My guess is that they are drones. When a colony has a need to rear drones and drone sized cells are not available within the cluster, they sometimes build what we call "clunkers". That's a lump of old wax with random drone cells. The drone cells generated can be pointed in almost any direction. Two clunkers are shown in the pics. The cells in question are in the vacinity of the clunkers. Makes me think drones.

Walt
 
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#6 ·
If you are refering to the cell w/ the bee looking into it, that looks like a drone cell which the beekeeper may have torn open w/ a hive tool or when manipulating the frames. The jagged edge of the cell makes me think that it has been torn by a human and not under construction by bees.
 
#5 ·
Top photo has some newly made queen cups and capped worker brood. Middle photo is worker brood. Bottom photo is worker brood w/ a capped drone cell every now and then. It also looks like it might be incorrectly oriented in the frame.

Do you see larvae, young stage larvae? If you do you have a queen. If you don't think you do, are you going to combine this w/ a viable colony?
 
#7 ·
There is uncapped brood, so your queen has been there sometime between 3 and 9 days ago (workers hatch at 3, capped at 9). So your queen was active after you'd first seen her. I'd just wait another week or so and check back then. Most likely everything is fine.
 
#8 ·
Thanks everyone, really appreciate the feedback.

I had thought the "clunkers" might be drone cells, after another local beekeeper mentioned she had seen "huge" drone cells in her hive and thought they were queens until a couple of local gurus assured her they weren't. This hive for sure had a laying queen in it ~10-12 days ago, and I did see some very small larvae last time I looked, so I am hoping she is still in there. I think she might be one of those queens that runs down into a corner of the deep when you pull the frames. I only caught a glimpse of her on the bottom of a frame when I did see her.

And yes, this cut out is fairly weak (due to losing bees and comb in the cutout- it was actually a really large 1 year hive pre-cutout), so I am going to split my Italians with their old queen and a couple of frames of brood going into a nuc, and then newspaper combine this one with the remaining queenless frames. I really want to keep this hive's genetics- a gentle, productive colony that survived last years drought and built up a strong hive is worth preserving!
 
#9 ·
So, it turns out these were queen cells. I found a virgin queen today, probably hatched within the last 24 hours. She was quite small, hardly any bigger than a worker, but definitely a queen. By checking my inspection records on beetight.com, I was able to figure that the old queen died about a week after I did the cutout. Might have pinched her accidentally during an inspection.

Anyway, I split a different hive, and then newspaper joined the virgin queen cutout hive with the queenless split.
 
#11 ·
JRG,
Educate me. What makes them 'obvious' queen cells. I see two reasons to guess drones.
**The cells are so short that there is no external stuctural ribbing like the peanut.
**The cappings are rounded like drones and are larger than the smaller, flatish capping at the exit tip of a normal queen cell.

jd,
Do we know for a fact that the reported virgin emerged from one of the cells under discussion?

Walt
 
#13 ·
#12 ·
They're emergency cells so they're not going to be beautiful it looks to me. The one next to the queen cup is most obvious, i can see the one in the middle of that mass of comb to maybe be drone but the way it's extended downward would make me guess queencell first. The other looks like a nice peanut to me (the one next to the queen cup that's started on the right). They don't need to start drones from pooling the base of a bunch of cells like those were drawn.
 
#14 ·
Here is the queen. She does not seem to be laying, so I am a bit concerned. Maybe she's just slow off the starting line? She seems bigger than when i saw her freshly hatched, so I am assuming she is mated. Maybe poorly mated? There are also some new-looking queen cells in the hive, so maybe they are not happy with her.


 
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