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Author Topic: Queen cell - swarm or supersede?  (Read 2861 times)

Offline greenbtree

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Queen cell - swarm or supersede?
« on: May 03, 2010, 10:21:26 am »
Inspected my one hive yesterday.  Doing well, brood and supplies (A lot of pollen put up) in both deeps although both deeps still have about two frames of space to each side.  Lots of comb building activity on those frames and the one super on hive.
I found one queen cell on the bottom of one frame of the top brood box.  I found the queen in the bottom brood box.  I couldn't tell if queen cell was occupied, it looked empty to me, but my eyes aren't the best.  I need to get a magnifying glass I think.
From it's position would this be a swarm or a supersede?  Where is a good source of pictures of queen cells at varying stages?

JC
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Offline iddee

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Re: Queen cell - swarm or supersede?
« Reply #1 on: May 03, 2010, 10:27:04 am »
It would most likely be a practice cell, never to be developed fully.
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Offline JP

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Re: Queen cell - swarm or supersede?
« Reply #2 on: May 03, 2010, 10:32:35 am »
Sounds like a queen cup, which may or may not amount to anything. Have you gone through the hive?

Lots of drone brood in a hive packed to the gills with bees is a precursor to swarm building.


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Offline greenbtree

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Re: Queen cell - swarm or supersede?
« Reply #3 on: May 03, 2010, 12:40:18 pm »
I didn't see any sign of a lot of drone brood, and I did go through the hive frame by frame.  I will just keep an eye on things for now.  Thanks so much for input.  Comments like increased drone brood prior to swarming or practice cells really helps me - hadn't picked that up from the books I have...

JC
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Offline OzBuzz

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Re: Queen cell - swarm or supersede?
« Reply #4 on: May 03, 2010, 08:19:24 pm »
Hey greenbtree,

I too had the same thing happen to me a few weeks ago - going through my brood box of my five week old hive i found a swarm cell on one of the frames. It's going in to winter and i freaked! i inspected this weekend just gone and they've now torn it down... albeit there were some others on two medium boxes i put above the brood box but the queen wasn't even laying in there. I think they just do it, as mentioned earlier, for practice and maybe as an emergency backup if it's needed at a later date. You might go in a few weeks time and find that they've torn it down... Don't stress too much - look for the signs that the others have mentioned. I'm a newbie too but i'm guessing that if:

a) Supersedure cell

It would be (from memory) in the middle to top half of a frame and an indicator that they're wanting to supersede should come from a below average brood production rate or brood pattern

b) swarm cell


Would be hanging off the bottom of the frames and a precursor to swarming would be a packed hive and a high number of drone cell/drones
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