Splits - Why give them more than one queen cell?

[Duane]

Sorry, I meant the idea of squashing a queen was hard to do last fall.  I believed some died because there was not enough mass there.  If they were combined with others, maybe they would have survived.

[djgriggs]

Question..

I have read both " to leave the current queen where she is and or move her over to the new split".

Hello everyone.. When making a split big or small,, should you also move the current queen from the box your splitting and put her into the new split.. I have seen many videos as to where they also transfer the queen..

I am asking because I did not do this and wondering if I should have......

I think either one works.  What I did in my case was move the queen to a new box and the old box raised several queen cells.  Which was what I wanted.  If you don't want your own queens, you might do it differently.

Hello everyone.. I am looking for a good school a place where I can learn about bees . Anyone know of a place like that ???? :) , kidding I am here. :)  no really

I think that I might have screwed up my split... I was trying to do a split to get ahead of the bees swarming.. Well as it turns out I think the bees swarmed just before my split. I say that because I could not find any new eggs in the original hive today. I mean it was getting a little dim / dark out. I did see capped brood / larva / and a lot of empty cells that should have had something in them "all of this in the top box" I also seen a few swarm cells and what appeared to be 3 queen cells almost fully capped. These Cells were not there this weekend...

When I did the split on this hive I had put the frame that had the first capped queen cell over to the split... my concern is ,, How bad did I screw up :) , I wanted to keep the genetics of the original queen and by doing the split I thought I was getting ahead of the swarm. I think they beat me to it...

One concern that I have is that I read somewhere that the bees should make a queen from an egg / very young larva if it is three days or so old it will not make a good queen,, how true is this and sense I did not see eggs in the top box where I normally would does this hurt my chances of the new queen cells giving me a good queen ?
What would happen if I put back the from with the Original queen cell.. (good thing / bad thing,,good idea / bad idea) now that there are at least 1 /3 new queen cells in that hive. Will they be good queens ? How do you know the quality of the queen other than the laying pattern etc ?

Thank you ,

[cao]

Sorry, I meant the idea of squashing a queen was hard to do last fall.  I believed some died because there was not enough mass there.  If they were combined with others, maybe they would have survived.

I don't like the idea either.  I like giving them a chance even if it a slim one.  Sometimes they suprise you.  I had one that I thought would never make it through winter this year.  The bees filled about five medium frames last fall.  They are doing just fine right now with two 10 frame medium boxes mostly filled.

When I did the split on this hive I had put the frame that had the first capped queen cell over to the split... my concern is ,, How bad did I screw up :) , I wanted to keep the genetics of the original queen and by doing the split I thought I was getting ahead of the swarm. I think they beat me to it...

If you left the queen in the original hive and just removed capped queen cells, odds are they will still swarm(or have already swarmed).  When I see swarm cells in progress and can find the queen, I will remove her(with some bees) to simulate a swarm.  I don't think you screwed up too much.   If you have at least a queen cell in your split, then leave them alone for 2-3 weeks for the queen to do her thing.  If you have multiple queen cells in your original hive, you could do more splits or leave them be and let them sort it out.

As the saying goes:  When you don't know what to do then do nothing.  The bees will work it out.

[beepro]

If you have multiple cells then let the first queen destroy the rest usually this is the case after the first queen emerged.   I've watched a new queen done this before.  So you don't have to squish any Q-cell.   Just let the bees do it by their own.

Yes, to ensure that there is a live queen you should make splits that are not that strong then give them 2 Q-cells in each hive.  The strong hive can still make after swarm if you give them 2 cells.  This is because the first queen that emerged might not find the 2nd queen cell that fast allowing the 2nd queen to swarm.  The crowded hive will also hinder the 1st queen's ability to move that fast also. 

[Acebird]

These Cells were not there this weekend...

Are they cells or just cups?

[djgriggs]

These Cells were not there this weekend...

Are they cells or just cups?

Cells,, fully formed , currently being capped.

[Michael Bush]

>But looking at it from either probability or worst case, should one only put one queen cell in each box?

It's always a "numbers" game.  What is most likely to go wrong?  What is most likely to work?  I would leave all the queen cells.

[Duane]

Yesterday, a little later than the previous two days, I was looking at another box to make sure they had room since there was a whole blanket of bees out front when it's hot.  The box that had been doing their swarming and returning was next to it and looked calm and non-eventful.  Partway through the first hive, I noticed there was increased activity next door, and then bees were pouring out.  Been there, done that, so I wasn't worried as I figured more of the previous days.  I went through the first hive (looking at all the queen cups) split it up, and then went to find the swarm.  It was way above my head in a cedar tree.  And this had been some time.  I thought maybe the prior ones were trial runs and this was the real deal.  I set a box over there, but they weren't moving.  It looked pretty big as in, how could there be much left in the split. 

Most swarms I've noticed, the bees on the outside seemed quite compact, non-moving except for a few coming in.  but these, lots of bees on the outside were moving all over the sides.  And a lot more bees coming and going in the air.   After awhile, more bees were in the air and I looked over at the box and several bees were on the outside with their rears in the air.  I kept watching and more and more bees were flying in the air, but I was waiting for the whole mass to come back to the hive, land on it and go in.  Quite a few came to be on the outside of the hive, but not the mass I saw in the tree.  Looking over at the swarm, I could see a few bees here and there coming to the hive.  It appeared it was only a few at a time until not so many in the air over by the cedar tree.  No swarm left, and I'm pretty sure they all came back. 

Now while I may not have all that experience of observing swarms, I feel I have more than the ones who call someone all panicky about bees setting up residence in their tree.  If I can't tell if bees are swarming or mating, how could someone who don't know about bees.  I'm starting to think it's very good advice to tell a caller, if the bees are still there at 6 p.m., give me a call, rather dropping everything and rushing right over.

I keep checking the other splits and have never noticed such things.  Did I miss them, or why the one several times and the others no such activity?  This is something new to me, never had come across it before.

[Duane]

Now to the question of the next box with queen cells.  I thought they had space, but maybe I don't fully understand opening the brood nest.  Maybe you have to keep doing that past swarm cutoff date?  They had space to store nectar, but were storing it in the brood nest, lots of brood, lots of bees, lots of queen cups.

I looked in the queen cups and several had eggs.  One was more developed and had a larva, I'm guessing several days old.  I did find the queen, moved her to a new box a few feet and some open brood that had no queen cups, (hope I could see them all), the honey and pollen.  I left the rest at the old location. 

Since this doesn't seem cut and dried, could someone give me some odds or guesses as to what is going to happen giving that one queen cup is further along than the others?  Would this be a strong indication the plan was after swarms or just a one swarm and the queen would kill the rest?  I figure I have a little over a week to figure out what to do.

[Acebird]

Swarm cells are of different ages.  Emergency cells are all the same age.  So I would conclude the colony has decided to swarm.

[Duane]

Latest update:  The one with the bees left 3 times and came back, well, based on the time, I should start seeing eggs.  Actually it's about 7 weeks old so past time.  Instead, I see a few capped drones, very few larva, and a queen cell that's either hatched or not yet capped.  What would be some conclusions of what happened?

I now added a frame of brood with eggs from another hive.  I have a double nuc I had made from another hive and they do not have many bees.  Their source hive queen cups had eggs in them May 30, so the queens shouldn't be laying eggs just yet.  The current queen cell could have a real queen, so I could just leave it alone.  I've heard that sometimes bees will try to make a queen cell around a drone larva.  Adding the frame of eggs may allow them to start new queen cells.  But if they should start developing other queen cells, what would someone else do?  If I didn't want to wait another month but use a queen from the nuc, how would I go about introducing her?