Hi everybody, I found a Queen from one of my hives dead on the ground today. When I inspected yesterday I couldn't find her but there were some very recently hatched eggs. Can the workers turn just hatched eggs in to emergency queens or must they be eggs standing vertically in the cell rather than slightly curled
Yes, they can. I believe they prefer newly hatched larvae. Most likely they will pick a few and build multiple emergency queen cells.
Cool, thanks for that! Would certainly be an interesting cross with the drones in my yard-would end up a Ligurian X Italian X Carniolan. I hope they do make some emergency queens! If I put protective cups on them all theoretically I could keep them all and make nucs with them which would be great.
What's the function of protective cups?
If it's possible in your schedule, you may be able to keep track of all the cells and remove them for nucs as soon as they get capped.
Or they already raised one and disposed of the old one but the new one isn't laying yet...