[nhoyt]

I looked at my hive this weekend, i found my queen and noticed a good amount more bees flying around (a lot hatched). A few questions to ask first is how long from the time a bee hatches will a queen lay in that cell? is it when one deep is 70% full of bees you put another deep on or is it when 70% of the frames are filled? Can some one take a pic of a queen cell i am not sure if i found a queen cell that alrdy hatched or if it was a drone cell.

 

[Andrew Dewey]

Before I put a 2nd deep on for the brood chamber I want to see all the frames drawn and 90% of the frames in use.

Here's a link to a queen cell picture: http://eberthoney.com/honeybeeblog/blog4.php/2009/06/01/supering-and-queen-cells

 

[warmbees]

Nice pics Andrew!

Here is the weirdest one I've had. I think they added onto this one, either after she hatched, or a cell that did not have a viable larvae inside. They tore it down a day later. Notice the cage over an adjacent cell. When I get multiple cells on a frame, and I need the queens, I place cages over as many cells as I can, and they then are protected when they hatch, and remain caged so that I can harvest them. I've harvested as many as 8 queens from a single frame before, without losing them to fighting or stings while still in their cells.

 

[nhoyt]

SOB im going to have to go check again andrew pic looks like one cell i saw. my first question wasnt answered lol.

 

[Andrew Dewey]

Why? It is a question I can't answer without doing research. The cell needs to be cleaned and polished before the queen will lay in it. I'm guessing this could happen in less than 24 hours given a strong population of workers.

 

[shannonswyatt]

I read someplace that a queen can reuse a cell within the same day the brood has hatched out, but I can't tell you were I read it. It isn't a secret, I just have a bad case of CRS.

 

[Colobee]

Cleaning other cells is said to be one of the first jobs of a newly emerged bee. Logically - it goes to work right where it starts out. Within a day it is feeding older larvae, and in another day or two, younger larvae. The queen will re-lay a cell a soon as she finds it cleaned, and usually this follows a flowing pattern of repeating "areas" within the brood nest. Clear as mud?

The queen is constantly seeking newly hatched/cleaned cells, and they tend to occur in "swaths" that are dependent on the prior egg laying "session". 'Confusing enough to read as it is to write? Some experienced beekeepers argue convincingly that cautions should be taken when disrupting an established brood nest, especially in a radical breakup, as it may throw off the "flow" of the egg laying-larva developing-brood emerging-cell cleaning- over and over flow of things in the brood chamber.

Others call it nonsense, and the bees always seem to adapt, but some beeks & there colonies always seem to do better than others...

 

[nhoyt]

the reason i was asking is i found several frames that had brood in them, they hatched. From what i saw i did not see any new eggs (then again i am not sure just how small newly layed eggs are), i did see some older eggs maybe a day or two old higher up in the frames not in the middle like last time. when i was watching the queen (i almost had a heart attack because i couldnt find her and it came down to the second to last frame and i finally found her) i saw her go over a half dozen what appeared to be empy cells not sure if there where brand new eggs inside.

 

[Dave1958]

Nice pics Andrew!

Here is the weirdest one I've had. I think they added onto this one, either after she hatched, or a cell that did not have a viable larvae inside. They tore it down a day later. Notice the cage over an adjacent cell. When I get multiple cells on a frame, and I need the queens, I place cages over as many cells as I can, and they then are protected when they hatch, and remain caged so that I can harvest them. I've harvested as many as 8 queens from a single frame before, without losing them to fighting or stings while still in their cells.

View attachment 10915

What kind of cage to you put over the cells, and where do you buy them.

 

[warmbees]

I'm trying to point to a quote from another thread, where I show this method... If this doesn't work, I'll just repeat it.

A suggestion for future when faced with multiple queen cells. This has worked very well for me, and I consider it to be far less risk to the queen cells than cutting them out and attempting to move them. I have used plastic foundation, which works well for this method.

Purchase some heavy gauge screen mesh, that is heavy enough to take a shape and can be pushed into wax comb. Obtain or purchase a small muffin pan or similar. Obtain a dowel or object about the diameter of the muffins. Cut mesh squares or rounds that exceed the diameter of the muffins by about the length of the depth of the muffins, on all sides. In other words large enough to be pressed into the pan and still have screen sticking up above the surface of the pan. Press these mesh cuts into the pan and trim off any corners or high places so that the new queen cup cages can sit on a flat surface and not have gaps big enough for bees to get under.

Place these cup cages over queen cells. This protects them from any queens that emerge un-caged, and traps them for harvesting at your convenience. I have harvested up to 8 or 9 queens from a single frame in this manner. :thumbsup:

View attachment 10479 View attachment 10482 View attachment 10480 View attachment 10481

It worked. Click on the attachments to view pics.

 

[warmbees]

A followup point from that other thread to possibly consider...

I must warn you, that if you simply abscond with your wife's muffin pan and she later finds out, you will not hear the end of it! So word to the wise, obtain your muffin pan from another source. I have dabbled in some metal work, so I had used the pan for pouring aluminum ingots for later use. Of course this heat pretty much destroyed any chance of returning the pan to the cupboard for further muffin use. So my picture shows me using one of my ingots for the object used to press the mesh into the cup. It, of course fits perfectly, so the form of the cups is perfectly to the pan. If you use a dowel or other object to press the mesh into the cups, it may not look perfect, but should work if your cup cages have sufficient depth.