Queen cells found - What should I do? - Bees

Lisa Cliffe November 21, 2011 at 9:04pm

Thanks for your help Virgil and Kristen.

I have found my queen so they haven't swarmed already. She's only about 1month old and has started laying well. This hive isn't really strong enough to split but I wouldn't mind having two hives as a back up if they're going to split themselves anyway.

It's two days since I saw the queen cells (uncapped) so I might go back and have a look for more and see how thoes are doing before I make a decision. I have to put a new mesh floor on this hive anyway.

I didn't want to wait for it to swarm I'm not usually home during the day and we have a lot of high fences around us which would mean door knocking to see if anyone's seen them - a bit of a mission. So I'm trying to be proactive.

Okay... time to go have a look see, I'll let you know what I find.

Thanks again

Lisa

Kristen Morse November 21, 2011 at 10:27am

Hi there, what I have done in the past is transfer the frame of brood with the queen cell in to a small nuc box, the type that takes only 4-5 frames, transfer another frame of brood as well if your hive is strong enough to spare it and a frame of honey and one of pollen. Check carefully that you haven't transferred your existing queen. The bees on the brood wont leave it and will carry on caring for it. You could let that queen cell develop or order in a new queen and destroy the cell and put her in. That would give you some certainty as to the genetics. Otherwise the newly hatched queen will after a couple of weeks leave the hive and mate with any local drones

The other main hive must be expanding rapidly to be developing queen cells. If you have taken frames out to start a split put some fresh frames in the brood chamber to either side of the frames the old queen is on to give her more room to lay. Keep at least a couple of the old frames together as a core. They may also be developing queen cells because she is failing as a layer. Is she a new seasons queen? If the main hive develops new queen cells after the split you might want to look at re-queening it.

I have done both moving a box to another location after a split and and made one and put it beside the old hive. Both worked. Good luck.

Virgil Evetts November 21, 2011 at 7:49am

Hi Lisa

You need to check a few other things first:

Can you find your queen? If not the hive may have swarmed already, in which case you will need 2-3 queen cells, preferably very close together.

You could do a split, but probably better to wait and see. If they haven’t swarmed you could allow that to happen and use the swarm (assuming you can catch it- a bit risky).

Any new hive can be established right next-door to the old one, as long as the workers have accepted a new Queen they won’t try and go back.

Check very carefully for other Queen cells. Chances are you have a few more somewhere. Destroy all but the best looking 2 or 3 and make sure they are close together, this way the first to emerge will find and kill the others. If she doesn’t find them it can lead to later cast swarms, which are a nuisance.

I’m sure others here will have insight re-forming a new hive with queen cells. Don’t worry though, queen cells are very normal this time of year.

Bees

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