Another Queen cell question....

[Barngodess]

When I inspected the hive about 5 days ago, there were about 4 queen cells, they were mostly on the "sides" of the frames where I found them. Today I inspected, and there were about 6 queen cells, but they were not in the sides, they were closer to the middle, one was at the bottom..... all different locations.  Is it normal to have so many ? Especially within a weeks time ??

When you see queen cells that are being formed but NOT capped off, do you remove them anyhow, or wait to see if they will be capped ?

Thanks for any insight.

Melissa
;)

[Michael Bush]

Do they have anything in them?  I would not call an empty cup a queen cell, I would call it a cup.  If there is a larvae in it, I would call it a queen cell.  If there is an egg in it, I'd check back later to see what they decided.

[Barngodess]

It has larvae in them from what I could tell. There are queen "cups" that aren't closed , and I leave those alone. I only cut out the ones that were closed. And they all had larvea in them.

Melissa
;)

[Michael Bush]

There are a variety of reasons for queen cells.  Supercedure and Emergency are very important ones to not interfere with.  Swarming, of course would be nice to head off, but I have not found destroying queen cells useful in preventing swarming.  It is, however, very likely to cause a hive to end up queenless as they often swarm anyway or have already swarmed and you missed it.