What do these terms mean? They were mentioned in Georges's pink pages. http://www.beekeeper.org/june2002.htm//
Swarm cells are queen cells usually found along the bottom of the frames when a hive is preparing to swarm from overcrowding propagation. Overcrowding can occur for a variety of reasons, lack of physical space, honey bound (hive full of honey), high temperatures, etc.
Emergency cells are more commonally referred to as supercedure cells and depict a situation where the hive decides to replace the existing queen for any number of reasons. These cells are usually found within the normal brood area looking like a peanut shell sticking out of the comb. The hive usually doesn't swarm from these cells as they are geared towards replacing a injured, ill, poor preforming, or missing queen.
Can queen cells formed at the bottom of a frame acutally be an emergency queen cell and not a swarm cell? I have a recently-hived 5-frame Nuc with PLENTY of room (only 6 drawn combs in a 10-frame hive body) that had formed a queen cell at the bottom of a frame but hasn't capped it. Of note, this Nuc spent eight days in transit with the queen caged, so perhaps they thought they were queenless and formed a queen cell on the frame bottom?
Quotethis nuc spent 8 days in transit with the queen caged,so perhaps they thought they were queenless
I think that the workers sense the odor(pheremones) of the queen more than they would sense her movement(especially in a small nuc),so caged or not if she is a mated,live queen, I doubt if there would be new queen cells. These could be old queen cells that have been on the combs for awhile. Brian offers the perfect explanations as to why they would be building NEW queen cells. On the other hand I have never received a nuc which had the queen caged,I find this rather odd in itself?
Thanks Brian. Just curious about the distinction.
JBird,
It is more likely that with the queen caged the hive decided there was a problem with the queen and so began a supercedure cell as a precaution. The creation of such a supercedure cell is usually where the most recently laid eggs are--regardless of where on the frame the eggs are. In such a situation releasing the queen should have put a stop to the construction of the queen cell.
Thanks, Brian. What you describe is exactly what I guessed might have happened. The last time I checked one week ago, the queen cell still wasn't capped. I've just been worried it was/is a swarm cell. I wouldn't necessarily mind a supercedure, but would mind losing a significant number of bees to a swarm in this relatively weak hive.