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Had a strange one today;
10 frame deep parent colony of a split decided to go back to nature I guess. They had one honey super on and seemed to be doing OK as a single deep. Today I noticed lower entrance activity and on inspection showed many open queen cells. About 24 vacant, one still capped with a purple eyed queen and 2 duds still capped. The strange thing is that of the 20 or so cells with neatly opened ends, none had been opened from the side.
I did not see any virgins but that is par for me as I am not gifted at seeing even mated queens. Cell openings are all fresh looking and there is still lots of capped worker brood so I am guessing not the product of multiple after swarms.
I have read something about workers sometimes protecting remaining cells but never anything to this extent; 20 or so and not even 1 from the typical side hole.
Thoughts.
10 frame deep parent colony of a split decided to go back to nature I guess. They had one honey super on and seemed to be doing OK as a single deep. Today I noticed lower entrance activity and on inspection showed many open queen cells. About 24 vacant, one still capped with a purple eyed queen and 2 duds still capped. The strange thing is that of the 20 or so cells with neatly opened ends, none had been opened from the side.
I did not see any virgins but that is par for me as I am not gifted at seeing even mated queens. Cell openings are all fresh looking and there is still lots of capped worker brood so I am guessing not the product of multiple after swarms.
I have read something about workers sometimes protecting remaining cells but never anything to this extent; 20 or so and not even 1 from the typical side hole.
Thoughts.