Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: tomiferris on August 26, 2013, 12:56:06 am
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I live in Northern CA - Sonoma County. I inspected one of my hives about a week ago and noticed capped brood, open larvae, and eggs. But I also noticed an unopened queen cup on the bottom of one of the frames I looked at (definitely a queen cup and not drone). The brood area is 4 mediums - this hive has been very strong in the last couple of years - I only inspected the top box of the brood area. When I spotted the queen cup, I didn't want to chance ruining any others. My question - why would they be raising a new queen when the old one seems to be doing her job? Isn't it late in the year to be doing that?
Thanks for any help/suggestions.
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Assuming, by "cup" you mean there is no larvae in it, then it means absolutely nothing.
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Sorry, actually what I meant is a capped queen cell.
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Well, a capped queen cell is a horse of a different color...
The thing to try to narrow down is if they are swarming or superseding. I would put that in the context of whether the hive is growing or shrinking and how many cells they made.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfallacies.htm#swarmcellsonbottom (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfallacies.htm#swarmcellsonbottom)
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Supercedure is usually done with less than 6 queen cells and often only one or two. Also of note is that if you find capped queen cells that indicate a supercedure is underway the chances that the queen has already been offed runs about 80%. I've had hives off the queen as soon as there were dedicated queen cells, open, newly hatched larva.
Removing a supercedure cell is a recipe for disaster, or at least a queenless hive.
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i have a hive that kept a viable queen cell or two around all season. i think these bees are russian hybrids. they finally succeeded in replacing the queen back in late july.