Quote from: spud on June 02, 2009, 06:56:10 AM
Hi
Carried out artficial swarm 3 May. Checked parent hive for new laying queen today and found:
Could'nt find Queen but lots of eggs and open young brood, but the older brood looked like drone brood as the bees were beginningto "dome" the cells and several open queen cells with larvae and jelly in!
The "queen" is still well within the mating timeframe and the weather has been good so I would be surpried if she could'nt get mated but why the drone brood and more importantly why the Queen cells.
I destroyed the QC's to buy a little time, anyone got any ideas or thoughts?
Many thanks
You just might have killed your replacement queen by destroying the queen cells. I always advise against removing queen cells because there are just too many variables how soon a hive will swarm after they begin the queen rearing process. I've known hives to swarm as soon as queen cells were capped and have several instances where I suspected the hive swarmed prior to capping the queen cell.
In the case of supercedure, the more queen cells present indicates ther earlier demise of the old queen.
It is always better to pull some of the queen cells and start a new to raise a new queen, then if the subject hive progresses like it should you can either do a combine or keep the new nuc, one more hive is one more option.