I have two hives just with queen cells, no queens. Tomorrow two new queens are arriving. Should I remove the queen cells day before (today), or I can do that just before introducing the cages.
do you take bee culture? they just had a good article on requeening hives. unfortunately, i go it to late to correct the mistakes i made requeening a hive and lost the hive.
good luck and i hope you get some good answers that we all can learn from.
I couldn't find the article. The last bee culture I have is from April. Thank you anyway. I decided and did removed the cell today. I made two three frame nucs, this way I have a chance to get more queens.
You can just add the queen cages.
Sincerely,
Brendhan
I think when they have capped queen cells they may not accept new queen.
If you put the queens in and the bees accept them they may or may not destroy the queen cells, in which case they may swarm. I a case like yours I would take the frames with queen cells and start a nuc and then requeen both hives. That way if one of the requeenings doesn't work you can combine the nuc hive with it and requeen that way. If both take you have an emergency queen or a 3rd hive.