queen cell?

[johnnybigfish]

  How can a hive make a queen cell or swarm cell, or whatever cell if there is no queen to actually lay an egg?
 I was putting a brood frame into a queenless hive awhile ago and when I pulled out the frame I intended to replace with the good frame, low and behold, there was the "Hanging peanut", capped.
whattaya make of that?

your friend,
john

[Brian D. Bray]

  How can a hive make a queen cell or swarm cell, or whatever cell if there is no queen to actually lay an egg?
 I was putting a brood frame into a queenless hive awhile ago and when I pulled out the frame I intended to replace with the good frame, low and behold, there was the "Hanging peanut", capped.
whattaya make of that?

your friend,
john

They will sometimes try to make a queen from drone eggs, especially early on in the LW sequence.  Do you have a lot of drone brood?

[annette]

  How can a hive make a queen cell or swarm cell, or whatever cell if there is no queen to actually lay an egg?
 I was putting a brood frame into a queenless hive awhile ago and when I pulled out the frame I intended to replace with the good frame, low and behold, there was the "Hanging peanut", capped.
whattaya make of that?

your friend,
john

I thought when they finally cap it, then it is from a worker egg. I know I read here that many times they place unfertilized eggs into a queen cell, but tear them down before they finally cap it. Am I making this up in my head???? 

[NWIN Beekeeper]

[Am I making this up in my head?]

Purhaps? How many fingers Am I holding up?

[I thought when they finally cap it, then it is from a worker egg.]

I think you mean a female egg... but not really.
It never becomes what you thing of as being a female egg.
You might be better to think of it a double-male egg.
But it does take 'magic', 'luck', and a couple tries for this to be successful.
But usually it isn't, and hive becomes fatally queenless and over run by drones from the laying worker.

I have had queens emerge from such, but they have always been runted.
The hive also tries to immediately supercede.
Often before the new 'queen' is even mated.
I suspect that nature realizes its faults early in the game and retries upon the acknowledgement.

This is a bad situation that will jerk you around and waste your time and energy.
It is interesting to see and understand, but not very productive.
It is much more rewarding to have a active hive that is thriving then watching a nearly hopeless struggle.

Get the hive queenright and move on to greener pastures.
Read about anarchist/laying workers and thelytoky (diploid males).

Annette - Wikipedia does call diplod males "female" but that isn't completely correct.
While dipoids do have the same number of chromosomes, they are 16 duplicates of the original 16 to total 32. A female egg on the other hand is 32 unique chromosomes. There are serious genetic differences between both concepts and they should not both be lumped into a 'female' category based on chromosome number alone. Especially when dealing with hybrids and hereditary issues like hygienics.

-Jeff

[johnnybigfish]

No Brian, No Drone brood....Thats why I added the brood frame..There were just bees drawing out comb and storing a little honey.
 These bees came from a swarm I caught. I had figured that I would put the swarm in this hive box. but when I opened the nuc I brought them home in, The bees poured out like crazy and were flying everywhere!
What was left in the nuc box I dumped into the box we're talkng about. All the flying bees went into a hive box right next to the hive I wanted them to go into(inches away). And, of course, this hive just hung a peanut recently too..Anyways, as I'm so lousy at finding queens, I just left things alone, knowing that theres a possibility of now having two queenright hives.
So, you see?..As far as I can tell, there was nothing to even hatch in the mysterious hive that has the queen cell.
your friend,
john

[Michael Bush]

>  How can a hive make a queen cell or swarm cell, or whatever cell if there is no queen to actually lay an egg?
> I was putting a brood frame into a queenless hive awhile ago and when I pulled out the frame I intended to replace with the good frame, low and behold, there was the "Hanging peanut", capped.
whattaya make of that?

http://www.bushfarms.com/huber.htm#maleeggsinroyalcells

[johnnybigfish]

Hoooweee MB, That was a lot of reading!. Now, in retrospect, my situation isnt all that rare then.
 I'll sit back and watch what happens now...Regardless, they'll probably have a queen soon, one way or another, wouldnt you suppose?

your friend,
john