hay all I was wondering if you break open a queen cell will the bees repair it ?? I did an inspection today and once again i broke open some cells between the top and bottom frames in the brood boxes. I know for a fact that there were some queen cells amoung the carnage. what i saw was some very young larva floating on pillows of royal jelly. some further along than others. did i destroy them or will the bees just recap?? I am concerned beeing the new beek that i am putting my bees back... ( this also happened nine or ten days ago) or am I prolonging the fact that they are going to swarm?? the latter seems more likley because of where the queen cells are . I think augh!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i wish i knew.... what a learning curve!!!! time will tell.... I do have other hives so if the hive needs fresh eggs i can give them a frame but if they were planning on leaving on me well i am glad i put them back... and hopefully i will figure out how to deal. the brood chambers seemed rather full and i did give them more space. any input would be great I need people to bounce off of thanks. I also have good pictures of the broken cells and frames showing where the cells are.
More likely drone cells, but in answer to your question, no. Once capped and opened, neither cell can be repaired IMHO.
Thanks Ross but the cells do look like peanuts !! I am having trouble getting photos to the mods
Nope, no repair done.
If they are ready to swarm than likely there are quite a few more. I doubt that you could destroy all of them accidentally.
And that means that you will want to do a split with the old queen fairly soon, within the week.
Rick
After the split wait for 14 to 18 days to see if you have a queen that is laying eggs.
Jim
I think it depends on the level of distruction maybe? I've damaged queen cells before (were hit when pulling another frame out).
But last week I put a cage around a queen cell to protect it from neighboring bees that I was going to shake out. This cell and one very close to it were in the center of the frame just above a hole in the comb. Anyhow, the bottom of a queen cell on the other side of the frame was ajoining some of the comb below. During my manipulation the bottom of the queen cell cracked ever so slightly and became detached from the comb below. One week later, the cell looked to have been repaired a day later it looked as though the queen had emerged (hinged circular opening at the bottom the cell).
Derrick