Welcome, Guest

Author Topic: Queen cell question?  (Read 1389 times)

Offline asprince

  • Super Bee
  • *****
  • Posts: 1743
  • Gender: Male
Queen cell question?
« on: June 04, 2012, 08:14:41 am »
Do the bees build a queen cell around an egg or do they move the egg to the queen cup/cell?



Steve
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resembalance to the first. - Ronald Reagan

Offline rbinhood

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 278
  • Gender: Male
Re: Queen cell question?
« Reply #1 on: June 04, 2012, 08:32:21 am »
Cell around the egg.
Only God can make these two things.....Blood and Honey!

Offline FRAMEshift

  • Super Bee
  • *****
  • Posts: 1681
Re: Queen cell question?
« Reply #2 on: June 04, 2012, 08:47:38 am »
Depends on whether it's an emergency cell or a swarm/supercedure cell.   If the bees know in advance that they want to prepare to make a queen, they will start a queen cup and the queen will then lay an egg inside it.  The cup can then be expanded into a queen cell.  Queen cups/cells are often built just-in-case and may be torn down again before being capped.

In the case of an emergency cell, when the need for a new queen is not recognized by the bees while there is still a laying queen available, they have to refashion a worker cell into a queen cell after the egg has been laid.  In that case they prefer a young larva in a newly drawn cell which has soft, pliable wax that is easily reworked into a queen cell.

The workers don't move eggs around from one cell to another.
"You never can tell with bees."  --  Winnie-the-Pooh

Offline asprince

  • Super Bee
  • *****
  • Posts: 1743
  • Gender: Male
Re: Queen cell question?
« Reply #3 on: June 04, 2012, 08:56:14 pm »
Thanks for the information. It was just a question that crossed my mind.


Steve
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resembalance to the first. - Ronald Reagan

Offline iddee

  • Universal Bee
  • *******
  • Posts: 10853
  • Gender: Male
Re: Queen cell question?
« Reply #4 on: June 04, 2012, 10:36:36 pm »
Except for swarm cells, they don't use eggs. They start with larva.
Like frame says, they don't move them.
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

*Shel Silverstein*

 

anything