TWO QUESTIONS ONE ON RE-Queening

[Kirk-o]

How long after you remove a supercedure cell before the bees know they are Queenless so you can introduce a new queen.And I just extracted tweo boxes should I put them on the hive and let the bees clean up or just put them out in the yard,

kirk0

[newguy]

kirko
just because you saw a supercedure cell does  not mean
they are queeneless, if they wanted to supercede, there must be a queen.  unless you already knew that they were queenless. in that case disregaurd.  ive heard that they know they are queenless in minutes to hours, however im not sure what the official waiting time should be.

[Brian D. Bray]

Kirko,

Why remove a supercedure cell?  The bees will often make one as insurance due to a multitude of reasons and then when conditions change they'll tear it down themselves.   A supercedure cell isn't a swarm cell.  It can simply mean that the bees are dissatisfied with the queen they have and if the cell has already been capped it is possible the bees have already killed the other queen.
I've always operated on the theory that supercedure isn't neccessarily a bad thing.

[Michael Bush]

Supercedure:  When a failing queen is being replaced.  The old queen is still there.

Emergency:  When a queen goes missing or is killed and the bees are trying to replace here.  The hive is queenless.

Swarm:  When the bees are intending to split the hive and they require extra queens to do so.

If you have a true supercedure cell, then you have a queen.  As long as you have a queen, it won't matter if you destroy the cell.  If you want to requeen with purchased stock, then you need to remove both the queen and the supercedure cell.  2 hours is the minimum time for them to realize without a doubt that the queen is gone and to shift gears where they will accept a new one.  (they can tell the queen is gone in about 10 minutes which you can tell by the dissonent roar from the hive).  I would not go more than 24 hours.

If you have an emergency cell, I would just destroy it and give them the new queen.  You don't need to wait, but 2 hours would be the minimum.