So as some of you might know I tend to ask odd questions...some of which there is no answer.
My wife and I were talking the other day and the subject of queen cups came up. We started wondering if someone were to have a frame of built up comb and there happened to be a queen cup on it with nothing in it and you took that frame and placed it in another hive that might be ready to requeen, would they use it? Or would they just ignore it or tear it down?
Quote from: Aroc on March 20, 2019, 09:08:26 PM
............ would they use it? Or would they just ignore it or tear it down?
Yes
Like THP said, they may do either. Even if the bees made the queen cup, they may or not use it. I open up a cut out hive yesterday that had lots of open queen cells and a few unused queen cups. This hive had already superswarmed several times and was down to almost no brood but I we did find 2 virgin queens. My wife found one sitting on my shoulder after I had removed most of the comb and she found the second virgin on top of the vacuum.
I strongly suspect I had at least one more queen in the beevac.
Jim Altmiller