[Carl F]

Try saying that ten times, fast...

I have a colony that looked great on my inspection today. Didn't see the 1 year old queen but good number of eggs and brood in nice patterns. I found a lone queen cell high on a frame and about to be capped. Nothing that I could see would indicate a need to supercede the queen. Do the workers sometimes get full of themselves and make a new queen just because they can or do they know something that I just would not know? Is it strange for them to supercede with just one cell? I though they would make several for supercedure or swarm prep. There are plenty of eggs if they wanted to make more...

What would you do, let them supercede or remove the cell? I have a queenless nuc colony that I could give the queen cell to. If you think that's an alright idea (I would move the whole frame to the nuc) when would you do it, move now while open or wait until completely capped?

Another option would be to let the supercedure happen but find the "old" queen and introduce her to the nuc before her workers do away with her.

Thoughts?

 

[devdog108]

Move it to your queenless Nuc. If they do it again, then they see something you dont. I had one on the verge of being capped completly, like less than an 1/8th of an inch, and the next dayi looked to see if it was capped and they had torn it half way down already and were dragging the larvae out..

 

[be lote]

id keep a eye out for 1 day old eggs. mite be a emergency cell.

 

[Carl F]

I saw lots of eggs. Don't know how to age the eggs but with that many I have to think that some were one day eggs. With a queen cell that well drawn and on the verge of being capped it is at about 6 to 8 days that they have been working on it... Doesn't sound like an emergency situation to me but I'll wait and see what the next few days bring.

 

[mothergoosemagic]

I just finished watching Michael Bush's lecture on rearing queens, and his take was if they let a supercedure cell go to completion, they know something he doesn't--like the queen's about to quit or there's something funky about her. At least if the new queen's in the nuc, you can always move her over to the main hive if necessary. Sounded like good advice to me.

 

[Michael Bush]

My assumption is the bees know what they are doing and any interference on my part will not improve the situation. Now if there were a dozen queen cells, I might steal one. But you have one queen and one queen cell. I would leave them to their own plans.