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Do grafted cells in a finisher hive induce the urge to swarm?

2K views 2 replies 3 participants last post by  beedeetee 
#1 ·
I've been thinking about grafted cells above a queen excluder that are in a queen right hive, would they induce the bees to swarm.
Wouldn't the presence of these cells in the hive make the bees think they are ready to swarm? Or is there more going on with the bees that they need to do before swarming, other then making lots of drones and having caped queen cells?
This also makes me wonder if it is a good idea to leave a bunch of caged caped queen cells in a queen right hive for safe keeping. Or would it be better to get them into their own nucs after they are sealed?



Glen
 
#2 ·
I've never seen nor heard anything suggesting that raising queens using the grafting method would have any adverse effect like causing a hive to swarm. Considering this method is used by a significant number of queen breeders I suspect it doesn't cause the bees to gain an urge to swarm.
 
#3 ·
I think that it's more that bees that want to swarm make queens than queens make the bees want to swarm. I can see how the timing could be just right, but it's never happened to me. What I have seen is they make queen cells below the excluder and then remove mine. I don't make many batches of queens, so I just use queenless finishers now though. If I raised more queens, I would go back to queen right finishers.
 
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