Do bees sometimes remove surpercedure cells?

[DavePaulson]

Do bees ever change their minds and remove supercedure cells once they build them?

Dave

[pdmattox]

I would think that once they comitt to supercedure they would continue building them.

[Mici]

they removed them in one of my hive, although...they left one so... i don't know why they did it.

[Devbee]

We installed our first package a month and a week ago, and after a few weeks, we saw that they had built a supersedure cell and feared that they were going to replace the (excellent, well-bred) queen from B. WEAVER with their own queen.

But we inspected them this past weekend, and our B. Weaver queen with her green dot was still reigning, and the supersedure cell was completely gone, so the bees must have changed their hive-mind and decided not to supersede.

[DavePaulson]

Thanks for the responses. The hive I have with the best queen as far laying the most eggs and best pattern has an uncapped supercedure cell in it.

Dave

[Brian D. Bray]

Some hives will build a supercedure cell as backup insurance in case something happens to their queen.  Other hives will continually build the starts of supercedure cells and then tear them out, over and over. Other hives will not build a queen cell unless they need to.  It is likely that if you have 5 hives in your beeyard that you have an example of each type of behavior.

[Michael Bush]

>Do bees ever change their minds and remove supercedure cells once they build them?

Often.  Do they change their mind about swarm cells and remove them?  Seldom.

[Shizzell]

Devbee, not to be a devils advocate, but why would you fear that the bees would replace the queen?

I often find that the one they replace is better than the one they had, even if the one they replaced was one I bought. I think the bees do a better job determining what queen is better than humans.

Jake