Queen cell in our healthy (we think) hive.

1002 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by Riverderwent, Jun 17, 2014

RD35

Discussion Starter · Jun 17, 2014

Checked our hives two days ago. Our east hive has its original queen that came in the package we installed May 02, 2014. There were no swarm cells but there were several "wads" of comb built below the bottoms of the frames that had bees emerging from them at different stages. We assumed this was just a result of the bees getting "out of the lines" on their comb building frenzy. So we scraped all of these wads of comb off of the frames (2 of them were the size of ping pong balls) so as to square everything back up.

So....In the middle of one of the frames was a queen cell that had a hole in the end of it. While holding the frame for inspection we did not see a single bee go into or out of the cell. They were almost purposely avoiding it altogether. We feared we had lost the queen of this hive too. But, then we found the original queen on a different frame working away! We did not remove the queen cell because we figured they might have already hatched a queen and she lost the battle with the original queen. So, should we have removed that cell once we realized the original queen was still there? Or, did we do right by leaving it for the bees to deal with?

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Tenbears

· #2 · Jun 17, 2014

Does the cell look as though a bee has emerged? Or are the edges smooth. Some Bees build queen cells regularly only to tear them down later. some sub species do so constantly almost one after another. If you found your Queen and she was laying I would not be at all concerned. if for some reason the hive decided to supersede her, one of two things has happened, the replacement was a loss for whatever reason, or because of the fact the replacement is her daughter they are both in the hive, on occasion the attendants will continue to feed the old queen because of the close relationship between the two queens even after the virgin queen becomes
bred.

I once had a hive that had two queens in it for 2 years they set up their own division line and each seemed to lay within these boundaries. when a quick peek in the winter was taken. There was always only one cluster. But two queens were found the next spring. I eventually split the hive and queens.

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RD35

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jun 17, 2014

That's very interesting! Thanks Tenbears! Next time we inspect, we will look over every frame to see if another queen is present! When we found the queen during this past inspection we just stopped the inspection and looked no farther!

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Riverderwent

· #4 · Jun 17, 2014

RD35 said:
So, should we have removed that cell once we realized the original queen was still there? Or, did we do right by leaving it for the bees to deal with?

I would have done what you did. (If the cell was less than ½" or so deep inside it was probably an as yet unused queen cup. If it was 1" or so deep inside it probably had been used. Ordinarily, if the entrance was a circle or circular flap on the end, the virgin emerged, and if the opening was in the side, she was killed.)

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