Weird question about queen cups

Started by Aroc, March 20, 2019, 09:08:26 PM

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Aroc

So as some of you might know I tend to ask odd questions...some of which there is no answer.

My wife and I were talking the other day and the subject of queen cups came up.  We started wondering if someone were to have a frame of built up comb and there happened to be a queen cup on it with nothing in it and you took that frame and placed it in another hive that might be ready to requeen,  would they use it?  Or would they just ignore it or tear it down?
You are what you think.

TheHoneyPump

Quote from: Aroc on March 20, 2019, 09:08:26 PM
............  would they use it?  Or would they just ignore it or tear it down?

Yes

When the lid goes back on, the bees will spend the next 3 days undoing most of what the beekeeper just did to them.

BeeMaster2

Like THP said, they may do either. Even if the bees made the queen cup, they may or not use it. I open up a cut out hive yesterday that had lots of open queen cells and a few unused queen cups. This hive had already superswarmed several times and was down to almost no brood but I we did find 2 virgin queens. My wife found one sitting on my shoulder after I had removed most of the comb and she found the second virgin on top of the vacuum.
I strongly suspect I had at least one more queen in the beevac.
Jim Altmiller
Democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.
Ben Franklin