4 queen cells?

Shanevrr · June 02, 2011, 10:59:13 PM

3 are opened one still closed. and this is my weakest hive. they must know something is wrong. Should i do anything. I know the queen is weak, same hive i complained about a couple weeks ago. Other three is doing great

AllenF · June 02, 2011, 11:03:24 PM

Don't worry about it. Bees know what they are doing.

Shanevrr · June 02, 2011, 11:10:55 PM

still see old queen though?

Hemlock · June 02, 2011, 11:51:34 PM

I missed the post from a couple of weeks ago-
Are these cells in the Swarm position or Supersedure position?
Have you been feeding them?
What kind of growing room do they have?

schawee · June 03, 2011, 12:03:37 AM

the bees know something is not right with the queen so they will replace her.i wouldn't do anything. ... schawee

Michael Bush · June 03, 2011, 02:15:19 AM

Four cells in a weak hive are not swarm cells, regardless of their location. They are supersedure cells. The bees seem to know they have a problem and are working at resolving it.

Shanevrr · June 03, 2011, 08:59:44 AM

so how does the old queen get replaced? Do new queens kill her or should I do it?

To back track a little, this hive as been building slow, very spotty brood, probably half of population of other 3 three. Shes laying but just smalll patches here and there, theres not a full frame of brood anywhere. My other hives have full frames in both boxes. So its obvious somethings wrong

VolunteerK9 · June 03, 2011, 12:04:53 PM

Quote from: Shanevrr on June 03, 2011, 08:59:44 AM
so how does the old queen get replaced? Do new queens kill her or should I do it?

To back track a little, this hive as been building slow, very spotty brood, probably half of population of other 3 three. Shes laying but just smalll patches here and there, theres not a full frame of brood anywhere. My other hives have full frames in both boxes. So its obvious somethings wrong

The bees know there queen isnt up to par, so they are replacing her with a new one. Whether the bees do it themselves or if the new queen kills the old-either way the old queen is going to be replaced. You should see an improvement in the hive in about another month. Just in time for the summer dearth :-D

Irina · June 03, 2011, 04:09:44 PM

Quote from: Hemlock on June 02, 2011, 11:51:34 PM
I missed the post from a couple of weeks ago-
Are these cells in the Swarm position or Supersedure position?
Have you been feeding them?
What kind of growing room do they have?

What is the difference between Swarm position and Supersedure position. I know the meanings.
Do these cells look differently?
Irina. New Beek

caticind · June 03, 2011, 04:26:23 PM

Quoteso how does the old queen get replaced? Do new queens kill her or should I do it?

To back track a little, this hive as been building slow, very spotty brood, probably half of population of other 3 three. Shes laying but just smalll patches here and there, theres not a full frame of brood anywhere. My other hives have full frames in both boxes. So its obvious somethings wrong

The workers will kill her, or kick her out, or (occasionally) allow her to continue laying alongside her daughter until she expires from some other cause. The poor brood pattern means that the bees also know there is something wrong with the queen, and they are taking steps to replace her. You don't have to do anything. But, just to warn you, it can take several weeks for your new queen to start laying. If you don't see eggs for a little while, don't panic, just wait. The break is actually good for the hive, because it interrupts the life cycle of varroa mites for a bit.

Quote
What is the difference between Swarm position and Supersedure position. I know the meanings.
Do these cells look differently?
Irina. New Beek

The tradition is that swarm cells appear at the bottoms of frames, and supercedure cells in the middle. However, I have never seen this to be reliable or useful information. Rather, it is the number of cells that tells you what is going on. For a supercedure, there may be only 2-4 queen cells. If you see more than 10, you are definitely looking at a hive preparing to swarm.

Really, the important thing to know is that the presence of capped queen cells means something notable is going on in the hive. Either things are going quite well (swarm) or something is going wrong (supercedure). It also means that it is a perfect time to do a split if you had been wanting to.

Michael Bush · June 04, 2011, 01:33:49 AM

>so how does the old queen get replaced? Do new queens kill her or should I do it?

I never get involved in internal politics of the bee colony. Let them handle things. They may keep two queens for some time.

>To back track a little, this hive as been building slow, very spotty brood, probably half of population of other 3 three. Shes laying but just smalll patches here and there, theres not a full frame of brood anywhere. My other hives have full frames in both boxes. So its obvious somethings wrong

My guess is they have laying workers.

Shanevrr · June 04, 2011, 10:11:26 AM

i cant see where workers are laying but its hard for me to see eggs, what i do see, all i see is one egg and i thought workers lay more than one? The queen cells are toward the top to middle, BUT i cant find any other queens but my old one, I looked really good but couldnt find any. I guess ill see what happens over next couple of weeks. Should I take some full frames of brood from another hive and put in there?

Larry Bees · June 04, 2011, 10:43:10 AM

Quote from: Michael Bush on June 03, 2011, 02:15:19 AM
Four cells in a weak hive are not swarm cells, regardless of their location. They are supersedure cells. The bees seem to know they have a problem and are working at resolving it.

I wish that I would have know that about a month ago. I had a weak hive that had 2 or 3 queen cells at the bottom of one frame. Thinking that they were swarm cells, I put the queen and some of the bees in a new nuc and left the cells in the hive.

The hive has a new queen and is doing good, but the nuc has lost her queen and I'm adding eggs to try and save it.

This is a good place for beginners to learn.

Thanks, Larry

Michael Bush · June 05, 2011, 12:03:15 AM

Early on with laying workers the only evidence is very spotty brood and an occasional drone cap but no worker cappings. Later you start to see double eggs and triples and eggs on pollen and eggs on the sides of cells. By the time you see multiple eggs you have enough laying workers that the egg police can no longer keep up.

Shanevrr · June 05, 2011, 11:04:13 AM

whats your advise for layingworkers, ive read you dump the hive 100 yards away and the laying workers cant find there way back, but ive also read that dont work. Ive read several ideas, but what works the best?

VolunteerK9 · June 05, 2011, 12:31:01 PM

Ive used a queen introduction frame successfully and Ive also done a newspaper combine of a laying worker hive to a queenright hive successfully. If you have queen cells, I think they are trying to fix it on their own.

FRAMEshift · June 05, 2011, 01:57:25 PM

Quote from: Shanevrr on June 05, 2011, 11:04:13 AM
whats your advise for layingworkers, ive read you dump the hive 100 yards away and the laying workers cant find there way back, but ive also read that dont work.

Don't dump the hive. If you have queen cells, your bees are already fixing the problem. What you can do is to add frames of eggs. That will bolster your weak hive, And if your current queen cells fail, they will have eggs to make more.

Michael Bush · June 05, 2011, 11:47:30 PM

http://www.bushfarms.com/beespanacea.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beeslayingworkers.htm