Queen cells

[Moonshae]

I've been using starter strips, so I'm not exactly sure what counts as the bottom of the frame. The bottom corners are not connected from about halfway up the frames sloping away from the bottom in a curve. Does the bottom of the comb, regardless of how high up in the frame it is, indicate a queen cell? Or will these always be down close to the bottom bar?

I dug through the hive looking for the queen, because I had been planning to use this as my cell builder hive, as I raise a few queens, and I wanted to confine her in preparation. I couldn't find her anywhere, and I looked through twice. I can't imagine that the hive has already swarmed, because it's packed with bees. However, I found 5 or 6 queen cells, 4 capped, 1 nearly capped, and one just an empty cup.

I wasn't expecting to see this, so I didn't have the camera handy, or I would have taken a picture.

Thoughts? I don't have any empty equipment at the moment into which I could make some splits. I have a ton of boxes on order, but the frames are still backordered, so I'm stuck until they come in. I have two nucs bursting at the seams, too, that need to go into full hives before they swarm.

[randydrivesabus]

there is a queen rearing method called the Miller method which works the way you describe. you cut the comb into a triangular shape through a bunch of eggs or very young brood cells. the queen cells are formed along the cut edge. is this like what you are describing?
too bad about being equipment short. are you in a bee club where you could borrow some equipment from someone?

[Moonshae]

Sounds like that's similar to what I'm seeing. I've sent an e-mail to the club president, hoping he can help me out, or point me to someone else who can.

I do have a similar picture. Imagine the queen cell in the center of the picture at the edge of the dark comb is actually at the edge of the frame, and the comb tapers inward in a similar way (ignoring that thumb shaped piece).

[Moonshae]

After discussion with my local club president, he believes they are superceding, since there are only 6 cells. He said that generally they build quite a lot more when they're swarming.

WHEW!

[NWIN Beekeeper]

I don't know if I agree....

I'm trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together here.

First off the picture that I see has combs suspended like this was a cut out or that the comb fell out of an existing frame. Is that the case?

If so, was the queen located and certainly located in the hive?
If not, you could have an emergency queen for that loss.

If the queen was in there,
Where there enough bees in a small enough enclosure to cause a swarm impluse?
I don't know the quantity of bees you are dealing with or the size of the hiving structure.

Again, if the queen was not present, and if a small cluster of bees existed, only a few cells would be built.
The bees may not have had enough population resources to build very many cells like your club president suggests. Also, if this was a cutout, if the areas with pollen were not salvaged, there may not be enough nutrition to raise very many queens. I am sure he spoke with the idea that conditions were ideal, I don't see them as such.

All-in-all, this frame looks like it comes from a moderately weak colony.
This is not something that I would consider as ideal for queen rearing.
You need frames with solid and plentiful pollen stores.
You need frames with solid and emerging nurse bees.
You need an existing population that forage.
The combs are loose and you need bees that are readily drawing comb.
These are poor conditions that I note when looking at this picture.
I am not picking on you, I am trying to help you, to help yourself raise good stocks.

Next time when mounting loose comb, loose the drone brood on the left side of the frame.
If the hives has little or no pollen/nectar stores the drones will be a serious draw of resources.
Let the hive focus on comb building and establishment, then when healthy, it will rear drones.
Otherwise, your house bees will spend time feeding drones and not be available to care for the brood.
Always consider drones as just the sprinkles on the cake, other elments are much more important first.

Your replies are very welcome and anticipated, good luck!

-Jeff 

[Michael Bush]

I'm more concerned about how many bees and how many cells compared to how many bees and how dense the bees are.  These are better clues as to whether they are superseding or swarming.  They always prefer edges for queen cells regardless of the purpose.

[JP]

That one frame has very little worker cells, lots of drone cells and very few bees, very few, big red flag!!!

If you want to save them they either need to be combined with another colony, shaken out so they can drift to another colony or you need to add NUMBERS with brood and eggs, but if it were me and the colony looks like this through and through, I would combine or shake them out, probably shake them out.

Also, if you have shb in your area, this situation is ripe for their taking.

Act now, good luck!


...JP