Supercedure cells

[annette]

When I checked my honey supers today, I noticed 2 supercedure cells in the middle of the honey frames mixed with some brood, These cells were torn open from the sides and not opened nicely like from the bottom.

Anyone know what this means???

I should mention that this is a strong hive with lots of stores.

Annette

[TwT]

When I checked my honey supers today, I noticed 2 supercedure cells in the middle of the honey frames mixed with some brood, These cells were torn open from the sides and not opened nicely like from the bottom.

Anyone know what this means???

Annete

yeah the first new queen to hatch will destroy the other cells, sounds like you have a new lady in the hive!!!

[Robo]

You may find this interesting ->  http://www.beeworks.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61

[annette]

I always read that supercedure queen are usually very strong good queens.

Anyone else have any experience with supercedure queens????

Annette

[Robo]

Although I don't have the records like Dave,  I never had great luck wth emergency queens.  Yes some appear to be good, but even those seem to be superceded quicker or peter out quickly.  I don't mess with them anymore,  too many times your hive goes a month without rasing brood why this queen mates and starts laying and then if she's a dud,  your hive is that much weaker.  It also seems like they have a higher failure rate in the Fall when your options of requeening are severely limited.  I'm sure others will have other stories, but I'll stick with reared queens as I have much better success with them.  Back when we could get queens from Canada, I got queens from Dave and they were exceptional,  so I believe he knows a thing or two. 

Think about it,  if emergency queens where so great, there wouldn't be the massive commercial queen industry that exists.

[TwT]

I see Robo's point but have never looked at supercedure queens as being a emergency queen, , shoot I have had some very good queens that I found that was swarm cells I took from hives and started nucps, I think it is natures way of keeping the hive going and she can be a very good queen, if the queen doesn't do to your satisfaction then I would look at getting another queen but I would give the girl a chance to show me what she has  ;)  but that's just me..... now don't get me wrong if your bee's were in a dearth and not much stores they could raise a inferior queen, odds are best when grafting or doing splits during a flow or feeding to get good queens, any time you graft queens you are feeding so they will raise big healthy queens...... I graft queens also but some times still do splits if I find some nice cells, one day I might do like Robo if I start seeing any differences. I mark all queens, went to check hives yesturday and one of my mother hive (2 years old) I found a unmarked queen that looks to be a 1 1/2 inches long, she is huge, I checked the hive to see if I could also find the old queen but I couldn't, I know they didn't swarm because we been in a dearth and all hive have been shut down for months, well anyway she have  started laying and I found 4 deep frames slap loaded on both sides full of brood and eggs, so maybe she will be as good as her mom.... all the queens I raised from this hive this year and last year were excellent queens with huge hives and good honey producers... tired of typing now

[Understudy]

I have never had a problem with a supercedure queen. It is a natural process.

Sincerely,
Brendhan

[Robo]

It is a natural process.

So.   That doesn't necessarily make it good.  Laying workers are a "natural process" too, likely from a supercedure gone bad....

[Brian D. Bray]

An emergency queen is when a queen is killed or dies unexpectedly and the bees have to build a queen cell over larva, such as when you take a brood frame from one hive and place it in another queenless hive.  They have to chose a larae to make into a queen--possibly one past it's prime or not fed royal jelly as much as a designated queen would have been.  Therefore, emergency queens can be problematic.

Supercedure is a planned event and care is taken in developing a egg from the onset with maybe even more diligence than swarm cells.  I've always been happier with supercedure queens over emergency or swarm cell queens.

[annette]

So I may not know whether it is an emergency queen or a supercedure queen. I will try to post some photos of the torn open cells this weekend. (like that would help to identify anything??)

I never felt that this hive was without a queen. They have been robust for weeks.

Thanks for all the help
It is so late in the season and now this problem comes up.

Annette

[Michael Bush]

>I always read that supercedure queen are usually very strong good queens.

Exactly.

>Anyone else have any experience with supercedure queens?

Yes.  They are almost always very good queens.

I wouldn't worry about it.  If it IS an emergency queen and if she IS not that good they will supersede her.

[Robo]

Supercedure is a planned event and care is taken in developing a egg from the onset with maybe even more diligence than swarm cells.  I've always been happier with supercedure queens over emergency or swarm cell queens.

Some interesting points, but what is your basis for supercedure being planned better than swarm cells?

How does one distinguish a supercedure queen from an emergency queen after the fact?   I also wonder how prominent emergency queens are.  It seems to me that the bees will supercede a queen before she would die from ailments as she will fall from meeting their standards.  Bees seem to have many criteria for superceding, we can speculate on some of them, but some are still beyond our understanding.  Also, how many of these criteria are capable of being passed on to the daughter?  Suppose they are not happy with the quality of the eggs she is laying.  Are you really getting a good queen from a bad quality egg?

Not trying to offend or taget anyone here,  but it is mind boggling to me that we have many new beekeepers on the forum that are willing to spend big bucks on fancy inner covers,  hive top feeders and specialty bottom boards which provide minimal, if any, benefit over methods available with standard equipment,  but are willing to roll the dice on a queen who is daughtered from a queen that didn't meet their bees' standards instead of getting a quality reared laying queen.  All for $20 :?  I can't speak for others, but in my mind,  the queen is the most important piece of a productive hive.  I'm a frugal guy,  but I've been burned enough by this.

[Cindi]

You may find this interesting ->  http://www.beeworks.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61

Rob, that was a very compelling little story.  Certainly something to think about.  Have a wonderful day, best of this life.  Cindi

[Bennettoid]

You may find this interesting ->  http://www.beeworks.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=61

Yea, thats food for thought.

[Brian D. Bray]

I found the article interesting but one thing was absent.  The article implied a lack of knowledge on animal husbandry.  If you've ever been involved in breeding to improve or fix specific traits in animals (including insects) you would know that inbreeding is one way to fix traits.  First generation inbreeding can fix desireable traits further inbreeding can cause chaos.  Continued Inbreeding in bees usually brings about undesireable traits--agression, lack of foraging, unwilingness to build wax, etc.

Inbreeding in one generation must be offset with outbreeding in the next in order to retain vitality.

The article mentions 2nd generation bees got mean--this means that the inbreeding was allowed to continue probably from ignorance.  A limited drone pool is part of the inbreeding and can produce a brother sister mating that speeds the degression of the stock. 

I have a brother/sister mating in my pigeon loft right now--for a specific purpose--they both posses a trait I want to propigate.  The next mating will be to an unrelated stock source. 

I had my MH hive supercede almost immediately.  The queen that came with the package was nearly listless and the hive was very slow to build up.  The supercedure queen is much better.  The Supercedure queen was developed on new comb uncontaminated by chemicals as I use wood starter strips.  I believe the chemicals some bee operations are required to apply for pest control is detremental to the bees, especially the queens and that's why it was necessary to supercede the queen.

I maintain Russian, MH, Italians, and NWC strains in my bee yard to minimize inbreeding.  I will take a first generation queen without hesitation, even if it is the subject of inbreeding.  When I have lacked stock diversity I have gone to another beekeeper and obtained capped queen cells in order to maintain the diversity.

Supercedure is undertaken to correct of problem that the bees have identified, therefore the supercedure queen will be better than the one it replaced.  My experience has been that most first generation supercedure queens will function just as well as a purchased queen. 

[rdy-b]

How much brood is in the honey supper no excluder right or is there another twist to this? how much brood in lower boxes  what are these bees saying ? they are moving up ? queen to slow ? need more rome ?bottom box empty? what is really going on with these bees :)  my say about the superseder is they get a little bit hotter each time especially if you are in a area of ahb that could be lurking in the gene pool but you dont have to worry about that where you are. but they tell me of a outfit that is famous for no treatments - but if there queens super-cede they are very hot but they are in texas. if all else fails remember rule of beekeeping #2 think its #2 let the bees be bees  RDY-B

[Robo]

I found the article interesting but one thing was absent.  The article implied a lack of knowledge on animal husbandry.  If you've ever been involved in breeding to improve or fix specific traits in animals (including insects) you would know that inbreeding is one way to fix traits.  First generation inbreeding can fix desireable traits further inbreeding can cause chaos.  Continued Inbreeding in bees usually brings about undesireable traits--agression, lack of foraging, unwilingness to build wax, etc.

Inbreeding in one generation must be offset with outbreeding in the next in order to retain vitality.

Brian, you may find this article on bee morphometry by the same author interesting.
http://www.beeworks.com/morphometry/index.html

Supercedure is undertaken to correct of problem that the bees have identified, therefore the supercedure queen will be better than the one it replaced.

Even if she is replaced because of poor quality eggs?  Granted there are times when the reason for her supercedure may have no effect on the egg and raising of the new queen.  But the problem they are trying to correct is directly related to the performance of the queen that is daughtering the replacement. So perhaps she may be better than her mother when they decided to supercede her,  but since the mother was not meeting the standards of the hive, that may not be saying much.

  My experience has been that most first generation supercedure queens will function just as well as a purchased queen. 

Good point,  but the problem is that a lot of beekeepers don't keep their queens marked and keep track of supercedures.

Annette, what is the heritage of the queen that was replaced?  Are you sure it was a supercedure,  or may it have been an emergency replacement?

[annette]

Robo:
This queen that was just superceded came from a queen cell I took from my other hive to keep the other hive from swarming. The other hive had a marked Italian queen from the bee store. The superceded queen was from a nice large fat queen cell and she produced a brood pattern to die for. I did notice though that her laying pattern changed over the last few months, but was still good.

RDY-B
To answer the other question about the brood in the honey super. There was hardly any brood in the honey super. Just one frame had a little brood and those supersedure cells. You bring up a good point though about the bottom super. I just recently removed the larger full size bottom super to replace it with a medium size super (I was trying to go all mediums) I did this because I noticed that there was not much activity in that bottom super except for a few frames of pollen and maybe 2 frames with some scattered brood. I had placed a queen excluder on top of that super and trapped the queen above in the medium super until I could remove that bottom super. When I trapped her in the medium I made sure she had enough room to lay having given her some empty frames.

Could this action have caused the supercedure???  I removed that bottom super 2 weeks ago after all the brood were born. It all seemed to go well, but maybe I disturbed the hive to much and caused them to replace her???

I am going to get into the hive soon as it warms up here. We are having unusual cooler weather and I did not want to get into the hive to examine to much. I am not really sure what is inside the medium brood chamber right now because the weather has not cooperated.

This is more complicated now, as now I am wondering if I caused the supercedure to happen by removing that bottom super.

Annette

[rdy-b]

there is a tecnech that is called hobbling. where you clip one of the queens legs-.the bees will supercede the queen every time  ;)       this was a passing fade.and is not practiced very much anymore. I think quality of queen is the reason RDY-B

[Cindi]

Brian, I feel compelled to compliment you.  Your posts are intriguing and your wealth of knowledge and expertise shines through.  I find so much of what you speak about fascinating and always am excited when I see you responding to posts, I know some excellent information comes our way.  This goes for some others on our forum too, the wealth of knowledge that comes into the readers' minds is exemplary and this is why I love my visiting to my second home away from home  :)

Loving this forum and all the members in it.  Have a wonderful day, beautiful life that we're all livin'.  Cindi