Found one queen cell doing full inspection

[peter123]

I just inspected my Warre hive and in the top box I found what looks like a capped queen cell.  I had a nuc box with me so I took that comb out and put it in the nuc box and continued on with the inspection confident that I would find more queen cells.  I didn't, and I looked very carefully.  Any ideas?  I found a couple more little practice cups but they were empty.  thanks

[cao]

First welcome to the forum.  Could be a supercedure cell?  Could just be the first one the queen laid in?  I hope some others will chime in with their opinions.  I just went through a hive of mine and found about three or four queen cells with larva and about ten to fifteen empty queen cups.  I assume the queen just hadn't gotten around to laying in them yet.  Hope this helps some.

[peter123]

Thanks Cao for the welcome and the advice.  I think I'll just keep an eye on it and do another inspection in a couple of days and see if I spot more queen cells. 

[Rurification]

Welcome to the forum.  Great people here.

In my [limited] experience, when they want a new queen, they'll make a bunch of queen cells and you'll know something's up.  When they're not serious, they do those practice ones and tear them down.    I often see a couple of cups during an inspection.   When I've seen capped qcells, there have been a bunch of them of the same age.  No lingering and dawdling doing one at a time. 

Hope you have a great year.