Nope, the bees didn't move eggs

[Cindi]

Well, so much for my attempt on research to see if the bees moved eggs into the queen cells that they had began on frame #7.  Guess we'll have to go that route another time.

I worked with the colonies yesterday, it took me three hours to go through all 10, the 4 nucs, the 4 packages, the overwintered colony I babied and the nuc that I made from the overwintered colony.  The day was beautiful, pretty darn warm though I gotta tell ya.  I took lots and lots of pictures of queens, bees, emerging bees.  It was an eventful and fun afternoon.  But I was darned pooped out by the time I was done.

To get to the point, I worked from one end of the apiary to the other and the overwintered colony was the second to last to get looked at.  I saw stuff in there that made my head swim!!!!

On frame #4, where the drone brood was being drawn out below the frame had three queen cells, all attached to each other on the bottom of the frame, one being fully drawn out and capped.  I must have missed this queen cell preparation on Thursday last.

Now moving onto frame #7 where there was the three queen cups that were began when I looked in on Thursday last.  That was the day that I made the cut down split and removed the queen and put her into the new box.  This frame had one of the three queen cups capped.  That means that on Thursday there must have been an egg present.  Let's say Thursday is Day 1, yesterday would have been Day 6, day of capping. Or maybe Thursday was Day 2, I don't actually know.  But there should be queens emerging from this hive's queen cells in no more than 9 or 10 days I venture.  I am sure there will be a battle royale (get the pun?!!!) going on in there to figure out who is going to be queen.

I am pretty sure, judging from the three queen cells on the bottom of the fram #4 that the colony had been making swarm preparations.  Removing the queen will have hopefully prevented this, they think that the colony has already swarmed, I am understanding.  Yesterday I also gave the nuc that I made from this colony a few more shakes of bees, to strengthen them further and to reduce the number of bees in the mother colony.  I smoked them heavily and misted sugar syrup on them to help with the confusion that would assist the introduction of these bees.  The mother colony was still pretty full of bees.  This reduction in amount of bees will also hopefully prevent it from swarming.  But time will be the teller of that tale.

That brings a question to my mind.   When a "cut down split" has been performed, such as I did, I wonder why the swarming mind of the hive has been prevented.  The reason I say this is because we all know that when a hive swarms it leaves with the original queen.  Afterswarms can be cast which are headed by virgin queens.  So why wouldn't the cut down split still have a swarming mind?  Michael, maybe you have some wonderful answer to this one?

Back to my story.  All the nucs and packages are growing rapidly.  Each colony was queen right, I saw the queen in each one, took pictures of this thing of beauty in each colony.  There were at least four frames of eggs, larvae and capped brood in each of them.   In my eyes, I have some pretty good laying queens and I am very pleased.

I saw many bees emerging, healthy, no deformed wings, good news.

I took pictures of a bee emerging, shot after shot, so it is kind of like a time lapse, turned out very interesting to me.  I will post pictures one day, I am getting closer to that, thank goodness.

All of the colonies had inner frame feeders that I had filled half full of sugar syrup when I hived the packages and brought the nucs here.  All the the sugar syrup was still in the feeders, barely touched, so I removed them and replaced with a frame of partially drawn foundation. 

This lack of sugar syrup intake is because these colonies were fed so well from my left over honey/pollen frames that I had frozen last fall.  These were from when I had to combine so many colonies last year, because of high varroa mites that caused such devastation.  With the eventual demise of all 10 colonies, save 1, I had lots and lots of food for any new colonies that I got this year.  It paid off.  I did not have to feed sugar sryup, and we all know that can be expensive.

Have a wonderful day, great life and wonderful health.  Cindi

[Ross]

Queens emerge on day 16 from the egg laying day.  Some small cell queens may emerge on day 15.  The first queen to emerge will generally kill all other queens before they emerge.  If the cell is opened on the bottom, the queen likely emerged.  If it has a hole in the side, it was likely killed.  Look for eggs a week to 2 weeks after they emerge.  Notice I said generally.  The bees sometimes don't read the book.  If two queens emerge at the same time, you may yet get a swarm.  That's a chance I would take.  If you kill all the cells but one, you might fail to get a queen at all.

[tillie]

Re: bees moving eggs, Curtis Gentry the official beekeeper at the Atlanta Botanical Garden taught his classes that bees sometimes eat the eggs for extra protein.

So when they disappear, maybe it's into the bees rather than into another cell.

Linda T

[Cindi]

Ross, nice information.  I am not going to remove any queen cells.  I am going to let the bees do their thing, and let them figure it out, they will know better than I.  Have a wonderful day, great life, great health.

Linda, ya, isn't that kind of gross, cannibalism?  C.