Hi,
A friend and I were talking and both have had hives loose the queen, and have both superceedure and swarm cells. Can't find any info in the lit about having BOTH at once.
Is this just because the hive makes queens of any egg of the right age when the queen is gone? If not then what's up?
I have a hive with 18 queen cells, most are swarm cells, a few are superceedure. The queen is long gone, no eggs, no young larvae. I'm just hoping they hatch a queen in the next few days and get on with life.
THanks!
TLW
Emergency cells are wherever they can find a proper aged larvae and they can be all over. Swarm cells usually are hanging from the bottoms of frames and supercedure cells are usually up in the middle.
Key word here is "usually". Even in the case of supercedure or swarms they don't HAVE to be in those positions.
But the big clue is that emgergency cells are USUALLY all over. If you are finding cells both on the bottom and the sides, they are PROBABLY emergency cells.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the info. The cells I have are either in the top third or along the bottom, which is why I called them Swarm, etc., but the Emergency cell idea sounds like whats going on. What a year for queens. I've lost four. First two hives were failing so we bought a couple of nucs. Those have done well until one became queenless and now has all the queen cells. What a learning year!
Thanks
T.