How many days from queens cells with Royal pudding to possible swarm?

Swarm cells vary in age. You might find one with a egg in it, but that doesn't mean there isn't one that is capped and they swarmed yesterday...

i checked my entire hive and found 3 swarm cells with jelly in them, one very full that broke when pulling the frame as it was between frames and the other 2 had a tiny larva in it and a tiny bit of jelly, i am interested in how long i have but will be doing a split later today anyways.

Assuming you find all the cells (doubtful, but possible) then it's a matter of judging the age of that cell. Basically if it's already capped, there is a good chance they already swarmed. If it's not quite capped, they probably didn't swarm yet, but may anytime after the cell is capped. If you were to check the hive every week and check for queen cells, in theory you would catch them trying to swarm...

Mr Bush: I was going to ask the same thing, only I found two QC uncapped in my split.
So as I understand your Bee math: Queen Cell from egg to capped 7 1/2 days emergence on day 16 -+

One of my takeaways from other threads was that, if you only find 6 or less (plus or minus a couple) queen cells, they're likely to be supercedure and not swarm cells. This thread seems to say that even if you only find one queen cell, it's probably a swarm cell. What gives?

karenarnett said:

One of my takeaways from other threads was that, if you only find 6 or less (plus or minus a couple) queen cells, they're likely to be supercedure and not swarm cells. This thread seems to say that even if you only find one queen cell, it's probably a swarm cell. What gives?

Click to expand...

In my case the QC's are in a split Nuc. But I would think one or 100 may indicate a swarm in the making, though some are just doing away with the old lady.:shhhh:

>Mr Bush: I was going to ask the same thing, only I found two QC uncapped in my split.
So as I understand your Bee math: Queen Cell from egg to capped 7 1/2 days emergence on day 16 -+

With eggs in them? Larvae in them? very large larvae in them?