Ouch. Slow down on your actions and do some research before destroying. With that being said, There are many situations that can take place at this time. I will only broach 1 of them. Are you sure they were Queen cells?
"BTW, these queen cells were on the lower portion of the frames."
If your frames are 6 inches tall, and you start counting at the top 1 to 6, 6 being the bottom. Where were the cells located? Did the cells look like a Peanut? And were they capped or not?
Curtis

 

Curtis is asking good questions! I would add that many packaged bees toss their queens before the end of the first year. They may know something that you don't know about your queen. As Curtis said, are you sure they were queen cells? What was their condition when you destroyed them? Actually, did you see the queen? Keep in mind that bees often make "emergency" cells. It's sort of like disaster recovery planning. These are often uncapped mini-queen cells. Nothing to worry about when you see those.

 

more details...

They were on the deep boxes and they were definitely the peanut shaped cells people talk about. They were in various stages, capped and uncapped. Husband destroyed them because in the class we took that was the direction. I understand that it is possible the queen needs to be superceded, but in my reading that would be a cell that is mid frame? Yes? Perhaps the bees have not read the same books I have??? POsting some pics now and will add the link there in a moment. Thank you!

 

Photos of crazy bees!

Here is a link to some photos of the bees. You can see the honey frames begun and several of the queen cells. I hope this helps illuminate my questions. Thank you all! Take a look by linking here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/harvardma/

 

Nice pics and actually, it looks like you have a great hive. However, my opinion is that they want to replace that queen. Since you've scraped off the queen cells, keep an eye on things and see if they build more. Make sure that they have space. I would assume that the two frames in each lower box that are not drawn are end frames. You might try moving some frames around without busting up the brood area and put emptier frames closer to where they are raising brood. Others here will have more ideas as well!

 

My interpretation...Those are Queen cells and the one in pic 857 is a beauty(or was). I see small amount of Droon brood.
I think they were just superceding the Queen. It does not look like an overcrowding situation.
I would go back in and find the Queen...and if she is there, do nothing for 2 weeks.
If there are more Queen cells I would not even look for the Queen. I would leave them alone for 2 weeks.
If there are no Queen cells and I could not find the Queen I would check back in 4 days and look for eggs.
If there are no eggs get a Queen. If you have eggs leave it alone.
Keep us informed so all can learn.
Good Luck
Curtis

 

You need to visually check for a queen, and make sure you still have one. Never destroy queencells, unless you have seen the queen, and she is laying a good pattern without alot of drone brood.

The bees know what they need, so I generaly let them do their thing, if I don't like the resulting queen, I give them one I do like.

 

The referee looks lonely and sad

 

Are you feeding them yet? If yes, then now is a good time to stop, this can sometimes cause swarming.

Are they drawing comb in the super, above the queen excluder? If no, then take the excluder off and bait them up with a drawn frame if you have one that size.

As far as the undrawn combs down below, you can move honey frames to the outside and the undrawn in the middle of the brood nest, they will draw it quicker there. This will hopefully open up the brood nest and cause them to reorganize, and if swarming will delay or abort that.

It is pretty hard to see if they are swarm or supercedure, although 20-30 sounds more like swarm. The important thing right now is that there are eggs, I can't see them in the picture. As long as they have eggs, they raise a new queen. Even if they swarm, they have enough bees to build up by fall, although feeding might be warranted later on.

If you can find the queen, you might want to temporarily split the hive, just in case, if you have a little extra equipment. Often they will have queen cells that you don't see and will miss if cutting them out.

Other than the first couple of suggestiongs, I would sit tight for a week and see what it looks like in a week. Just keep an eye out for swirling masses of bees......

Rick

 

Just for the sake of clarification, a queen cell has a larvae in it. A queen cup is empty.

I never destroy queen cells. If I found that many queen cells, I'd do a lot of splits and get a lot of nice queens.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beessplits.htm

Destroying queen cells usually results in a queenless hive that swarms anyway, or already swarmed and you didn't realize it.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslazy.htm#stopcuttingswarmcells
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfallacies.htm

Of course the time to prevent swarms is long before they build the queen cells:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm

 

is that backfilled honey in photo 857

in photo 857 it looks to me like the brood chamber is getting backfilled with honey. if this is the case it could leave the queen no place to lay. this would make for swarming

 

having just been through that...

and reading michael's page on swarming after the fact i would do what he says.

i also made the mistake of taking most of the queen cells out AFTER the swarm...DOAH! i'm going to split it tomorrow if there are any unhatched queen cells left and put in a good brood frame from another hive. a dead give away on my hive was that they were closing in on the brood area with honey. the bottom deep was completely full with honey and they were putting in the next deep. they had only started on drawing out the first super. i rotated empty frames in but it was too late.

luckily there are still plenty of bees in the swarmed hive and, hopefully, a laying queen. as i was clearing out cells they were hatching and the workers were immediately killing the queens.

good luck. keep an eye out for bearding (never saw mine do it) and the swarm cluster near by while the scouts look for a new home. i should have caged the queen in the swarm (in hindsight). or not been a lazy beekeeper and prevented the swarm in the first place.

 

Thank you so much for the many answers. We opened the hive yesterday and did a very complete search for the queen and it appears we may be queenless...or at least she is tapered off laying. There is a ton of capped brood and a few older larvae, but the many tiny eggs I was seeing are not there. Luckily, we had a couple of capped queen cells still developing, so perhaps I will have a new queen soon? Your thoughts? I will post pictures of the capped queen cell in the morning and repost here. Thank you again! Wendy

 

Your queenless, so let thos cells hatch.