Hey Folks,
I installed this package on 4-26-2012 into a virgin top bar hive. They are building nicely, far as I know. Newbee here. I have several bars of comb. They have open brood, capped brood, pollen and capped honey above the brood. We had a good number of drone cells early on but I don't think it was out of the ordinary. Yesterday's inspection revealed this little jewel on the upper part of the back of the comb on bar one (front of the hive). They have LOTS of room in the hive still. They have only built out 9ish bars. There are some waves to the front side of bar 2's comb (the comb that faces this one). I think this is the starts of a supercedure cell rather than just some cross comb activity into the valleys of the waves on frame 2. Am I right? I will state that I have had some definite issues with cross comb, drift at the wide ends of the bars and bars cross combed together where the bees "jumped the tracks" but this looks "different" to me.
(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/doggonegardener/SMALL5-21-2012supersedurecell.jpg)
(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/doggonegardener/SMALL5-21-2012bar1back.jpg)
(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a333/doggonegardener/SMALL5-21-2012topviewsupercell.jpg)
Sorry the photos are a bit blurry but I bet you experts will not have issues with that.
So, if this is a supercedure cell, correct me if I am wrong but I want to let them go ahead because A) I won't likely be able to stop them and B) they know more about their queen than I do and C) if I scrape this and my package queen really is faulty I could likely end up queenless. Have I got that all correct or am I totally missing something?
Thanks,
Ne
Hard to tell, too blurry but it looks like cross comb to me.
Jim
The pictures show some normal drawn cross comb. If the gap is too big, they'll start drawing across that way, and not creating a queen cell. With what I can see, it doesn't look like a queen cell forming at all.
Great, thanks for the help. Sorry for the blurry picture. I'll keep you posted on my next inspection if I am still concerned.
Ne