Supercedure question

1408 Views 4 Replies 5 Participants Last post by cristianNiculae, Jul 1, 2014

WBVC

Discussion Starter · Jun 29, 2014

I have a hive that seems to like to supercede whatever Queen they last made. It is such a fast turn over that I wonder if they do it from the first eggs the previous Queen laid! They must be super picky. Last time I left the supercedure cell and moved the Queen to a nuc. She laid fine. The QC hatched and again I see capped brood,larvae and eggs plus...another QC with a larvae and royal jelly.

Today I just closed them up and left it be...I am currently out of deep frames as is our local supplier

My question is this:

Normally when bees make a single supercedure cell to they wait until a mated, laying virgin is in place before dispatching the original Queen or do they kill her off earlier? If so when..when the cell is capped, virgin emerged, mates??

I was thinking if I get some more frames when there is a virgin and the Queen I may move the older ..supposedly easier to find..Queen out to a nuc.

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RonnieS

· #2 · Jun 30, 2014

I also have a hive that is doing this. It started as a last years June nuc. It's twin has built to 2 - 10 frame deeps and is packed with honey and brood. This one has just continually made supercedure cells and new queens, then does it again.
Anyone have any input on this situation ?

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FlowerPlanter

· #3 · Jun 30, 2014

Do you think they were trying to make a two queen hive?

I had a hive make just one supercedure cells too. The cell was already capped when I found it, no telling how old it is. Thought it was odd. I moved the queen to nuc that needed one. I still need to go in an remove extra q cells. You think there is a bunch of them even though they have a good capped q cell?

Now that I think about it. It's sister hive was a two queens hive, that I made two cut down splits a week apart, each with a laying queen.

AHB can have multiple queens in a hive. Maybe two queen hives are hereditary?

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wcubed

· #4 · Jun 30, 2014

Back to back supersedure (SS) is not that uncommon. The workers can tell by scent whether or not she was properly mated. If they find her poorly mated, they can just let her lay a small patch of eggs to start over and terminate her, or, they can let her continue to lay through developement time of her replacement - and beyond, with both queens laying. We will likely never know the criteria for their judgement.

As to a reason for poor mating, it could be something as simple as a shortage of drones outside of flight range of her brothers. Certainly, local weather is a factor.

Walt

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cristianNiculae

· #5 · Jul 1, 2014

I have a sort of a similar problem: a hive... done a cutdown on it... raised a new queen... using foundationless... lack of space for the queen to lay... started queen cells.
At first I thought it was supersedure but now I'm convinced it's swarming because of the lack of space for the queen to lay.
So far I've been using the queencells on queenless nucs. I don't have drawn frames and the bees are not building that fast anymore... probably because the bees are most of them old bees as the new generation is just about to hatch. I've managed to find an ampty new frame from one of the nucs and put it in the center of the brood nest and now I'm anxious to see what they will do next.

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