When I inspected my colonies last week I noticed a colony at the end of the line that had extremely low bee activity. I inspected this colony and found that it did not have an awful lot of bees. Not possible of a swarm that may have occurred, it never was that strong.
My purpose was to combine it with another colony that is not overly populous. Upon examination I found it had several queen cells. These queen cells did not look to be very big at all. I have seen queen cells before and they have always been much larger.
After searching throughout for a queen, which this colony was indeed queenless, I destroyed these queen cells. I then united the colony with the other colony that was weaker too. They have become one and are quite busy and happy now.
Look at the pictures. One queen cell looks rather weird to me, the side appears to not have been completely sealed. I don't think this is how the bees build the queen cells. Were the bees in the process of tearing down the cell? I would love to know some answers to this oddity. Have a wonderful day, great life. Cindi
(http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/9080/smallquencellpi5.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
(http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/1791/smallqcell2eg1.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)
There is a lot of food in the cell to start with to float the larva out to the edge. They are bigger than they appear. Queen cells vary greatly in size. I've seen many a nice big queen come from a small cell and small queens from large cells. There is no relationship that I can tell.