Day late and a dollar short

[Haddon]

well I checked the hive today, it consisted of two deep bodies, while going through the top I noticed the population seemed low. The top box is filled with honey supercell, on one of those frames I found an odd shaped floated out queen cell. I yanked that frame and put it into another deep. Started into the bottom half of the hive and the bees seemed extremely flighty, they were confused and aggressive and swarmed all around me. Got to the last four frames, up until then I'd had unfinished queen cells on each frame, the 6th or 7th frame (can't remember which) had at least 6 queen cells, perfect 'peanuts' except that each one of them had already cut themselves free. Checked for sign of a virgin queen on that frame and didn't see one. So I threw 3 of the more heavily populated frames in the deep with the first queen cell I found. They probably already swarmed at least once, with the population drop, but hopefully I will end up with one queen in each box. I will check on Wednesday to see if the queen cell I had left has cut out yet. Will most likely order a queen this week and will set up a secondary nuc as insurance while the population is still high enough to do it.

[asprince]

Be careful to not weaken the hive to much or you may have a problem with wax moths or SHB.

Good Luck,

Steve

[BjornBee]

There is a good chance that those queen cells were already killed.  ;)

[FRAMEshift]

perfect 'peanuts' except that each one of them had already cut themselves free.

Were the holes in the queen cells on the bottom (virgin queen exit hole) or on the side (virgin queen killed by a rival) ?

[Haddon]

All but one exit holes. I just want to see if the one on the honey super cell will cut herself out I figure the other queens didn't find it because of the distance between the cells. I ordered a Italian from Kelly this morning I had a lot of bad luck with hives going queenless last year so I want one around even if I have to figure out some way to bank her. And if all else fails I will recombine it all.