Hi,
I'm a new beekeeper this year. This past Sat I found a number of queen cups on the bottom of the comb. One had an egg in it. I'm guessing this means they're planning on swarming soon? Tonight I checked again and the other queen cups are still empty and the cup that had an egg still has an egg -- shouldn't it be a larva by now?
thanks!
Chris
Has the egg enlarged at all and started to turn in to a grub?
No, it's still an egg.
Sorry, I replied without reading your question more closely -- the egg didn't look enlarged. still quite narrow and long.
Eggs "hatch" on day 3-4. By day 5 you should see a noticeable larvae.
Scott
what kind of hive do you have and how populated is your colony? About how many queen cups did you see?
I am not a seasoned pro but I have dealt with quite a few swarming colonies now. First, just because you see an egg dont mean they will swarm. They may just eat the eggs and queens lay in they quite often and you will find this in literature. That said to date, every colony I have seen with larva in queen cups wanted to swarm or supersede. Swarm cells are also usually built on bottom of comb or frames and some will be on the sides of comb as well. Emergency cells will be on sides of comb and superseding can look either way. If you come back in three days and see five or more cups with larva in them, you can pretty much-bet the farm they want to swarm. If you see one, two, or three you can guess they are replacing the queen most likely and I just let them do there thing and so far its worked well for me. It is usually pretty obvious what their intentions are after you have seen it a few times. If you have a good size colony thats preparing to swarm you usually will find frames with up to five or more queen cells on them and upwards of ten, fifteen, even twenty cells total. You will also notice the queen will cut back on brood production and you may not see any eggs and soon only larva or just capped brood.
I found it to be pretty easy to deal with the swarming if you have another yard you can move the original queen to in a nuc box or single deep or whatever you use. There are other methods that will break the swarming impulse but first if it comes to that point we need to know what kind of equipment you have and if you have extra available. Im sure someone will be able to recommend a way to deal with it even if you dont have other equipment. Depending on how big your colony is and how much equipment you have, you may be able to use this as an opportunity to make another colony, which is my method of choice if I have more equipment available.
If you found an egg two days ago i would wait two days and come back and see what you find. If they are going to swarm they will usually do it right after the queen cells are capped.
thank you for the responses.
This is a Lang hive, I have 10-fr mediums, foundationless, 3 boxes so far.
I found a total of 6 queen cups on 4 frames, all in the same box, all on the bottom of the comb just above the bottom frame. I only saw one with an egg in it.
Last night (Tue) I was expecting to see a larva in the cup since I had seen an egg on Sat. I guess I was too early and I'll look again tomorrow or Friday.
Last night it was close to dusk when I was looking and the foragers were home so the hive looked very full of bees. I'm wondering if I should be adding another box. I did try to open up the broodnest a little by rotating in a few empties in between frames of drawn comb. Perhaps they're itching for more room. Wish they could talk or I knew their language!
thanks again!