[dulley]

I made a split last Monday and purposely moved the old queen to the new hive with lots of brood and bees so it builds up faster. My old hive was extremely strong. I made sure to leave some frame with eggs in the old hive. II checked and there were no swarm cells. I checked it after four days, but did not see a new queen cell being started. The old queen is laying well in the new hive. How long will it take until I should see a new queen cell being formed in the old hive?

 

[HTB]

You should have queen cells already.

 

[HTB]

Also, young bees build queen cells and raise queens so you may have done a disservice if you gave the existing queen most of the brood frames with nurse bees. How many frames of brood did you leave for the split?

 

[JWPalmer]

If you did not leave frames with appropriately aged larvae and only eggs, it could be up to eight days before you find capped queen cells.

 

[dulley]

If you did not leave frames with appropriately aged larvae and only eggs, it could be up to eight days before you find capped queen cells.

There were still plenty of frames with eggs, larvae and capped brood in the old hive. There are a lot of tall drone brood in there this time of year, so an early queen cell may not have been very easy to spot. I thought about buying a new queen because all of my three hives came from the same queen originally. If I installed a new queen cage, should I destroy the existing queen cells first or will the new queen just kill them on her own when she gets out of the cage?

 

[crofter]

There were still plenty of frames with eggs, larvae and capped brood in the old hive. There are a lot of tall drone brood in there this time of year, so an early queen cell may not have been very easy to spot. I thought about buying a new queen because all of my three hives came from the same queen originally. If I installed a new queen cage, should I destroy the existing queen cells first or will the new queen just kill them on her own when she gets out of the cage?

There is at least a possibility that there was an unmated virgin in that part of the split. If you put another in another queen she will be killed either by the virgin or by the workers.
Best bet is to put in another frame with open brood/eggs as a test to see if they start cells. If they do not start cells they consider that they have a queen. We usually assume that if we pull a queen out that the colony is queenless, but there are many posts stating the percentage that tp actually have 2 queens is quite common. It really sucks if you put in a pricey queen and she gets knackered.

 

[dulley]

There is at least a possibility that there was an unmated virgin in that part of the split. If you put another queen in she will be killed. Best bet is to put in another frame with open brood/eggs as a test to see if they start cells. If they do not start cells they consider that they have a queen. We usually assume that if we pull a queen out that the colony is queenless. There are posts stating the percentage that have 2 queens and it is quite common. It really sucks if you put in a pricey queen and she gets knackered.

I searched carefully and there were not two queens in the hive. There was a lot of drone brood and worker brood. The eggs I saw could have possibly been unfertilized drone eggs. I assume the workers would known that and not try to make a queen from them. The weather should be warm enough tomorrow for me to check for queen cells again.

 

[crofter]

Virgins destroy other queen cells; mated queens dont destroy cells. Otherwise supercedure could not occur. Bees apparently may prevent virgin queens from killing old queen until the virgin returns mated.

 

[JWPalmer]

The bees will also prevent a virgin from killing other virgins so they can have an after swarm several days after the primary swarm.

 

[crofter]

The bees will also prevent a virgin from killing other virgins so they can have an after swarm several days after the primary swarm.

I wonder what all hive conditions are part of the decision making process. I have heard that the virgins will only destroy ripe to piping emergent cells and not younger ones. Maybe the numbers of combs of capped brood and stores is a factor in the yea or nay. Pretty amazing anyhow.

 

[username00101]

If you did not leave frames with appropriately aged larvae and only eggs, it could be up to eight days before you find capped queen cells.

This is the correct response, somewhat unusual to see this, but it definitely happens.

the comb cells will get enlarged, and gorged with royal jelly (relative to typical worker brood).

 

[HTB]

One way or another you should be able to see queen cells, either under construction or capped.

 

[fieldsofnaturalhoney]

This is the correct response, somewhat unusual to see this, but it definitely happens.

, tell my colonies/surprises this. HTB Agreed., if you checked every frame something should have been under construction, or you have something running around

 

[crofter]

I am waiting to see the outcome. I know how difficult it can be to spot a virgin queen especially when you are not deliberately looking for one. I think it would be rare for a healthy populous colony separated from their queen to NOT start cells from frames with both fertilized eggs and all stages of worker larvae. The split was a week ago.

 

[HTB]

I've also seen some really small emergency queen cells but there are normally good sized ones as well, could be they were simply overlooked. Everyone is different in their skill level at inspecting a frame.