Most queen cells ever??

[caticind]

Just out of curiosity, what's the largest number of queen cells you have ever seen in a single hive on the brink of swarming?

I just opened a hive from an April package and found...well, I stopped counting at 40 queen cells.  Only 2/3 were capped yet, and there were large uncapped worker larvae, but no eggs, so the queen might still have been present (definitely was there no more than 6 days ago).  

Most of the queen cells were built "stacked" vertically, two or three together, and up to 8 on each side of 7 frames, though most had only 3 or 4.  For reference the whole colony covered 15 frames (long hive).

At least my timing was good as I was able to pull out two nucs and also add queen cells to some recent queenless splits.  But I was stunned at how many cells they built!

[Brian D. Bray]

The most queen cells I've every found in a single hive was about 57 plus a couple dozen queen cups.  This was in a cut out that spanned across three studs in one wall.  All three sections had queen cells and cups, I would have guessed that each section probably had its own queen.
By the time I got done with the cut out I had 4 wash tubs full of honey comb and a 2 box hive.  I didn't get all the bees, as I think some absconded with the extra queens.  I did end up with one queen though.