Queen Cells- Swarm and Supersedure

Welcome to our new Question and Answer posts.  Please feel free to post questions and comments below.

Here is the question and statement of the Beekeeper:

“You’re going to get tired of hearing from me! I’ve got a problem and need some help. I went to take off and clean the feeders as you recommended. I thought I’d do my first hive check as well. It’s been two weeks now since I put them in.

Hive #1 is doing great. Four frames of capped brood and other frames being drawn out.

Hive # 2, not so good. There is no sign of the queen. No capped brood, no eggs or larvae that I can see. However, there are several swarm cells present. I see no evidence of workers laying. The frames are drawn out some, but nothing like the first hive.

So the question is, “what to do”? Would they attempt to build a queen cell with a worker’s egg? I know it would  be unfertile and thus a drone. Anyway, should I destroy the cells? Place a frame with eggs from the first hive into the second? Or just order another queen? If I can get one that’ll save me some time waiting for them to make one. Your suggestions?

There are two (2) points of consideration here.

FIRST : This is a classic example of “Supersedure cells” and not “Swarm Cells”. This can be confusing to many, so I wanted to take the opportunity to relay this information to you for y our consideration. Please notice the location of the cells, very important: they are in the middle of the frame! Swarm cells are found on the bottom of the frame.

The hive is experiencing the failure of their queen, so they are replacing her. DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, INTERFERE WITH THIS PROCESS. The queens will emerge and the strongest will survive. That is what Mother Nature has intended. The hive wants to be certain to have a queen, so they have prepared for more than one to emerge. When returning to the hive in 10 days -  determine hive status at that time.

SECOND: The statement, “Would they attempt to build a queen cell with a worker’s egg? I know it would be unfertile and thus a drone”.

Correction: Worker eggs are diploid and fertile, drone cells are haploid and not fertile.  Any worker bee larvae, one day old (remember the egg is an egg for three days), that means the egg is four days old, can be fed royal jelly for 8 days, and a queen will be produced. All eggs, drone and worker are fed royal jelly for the first three days. There are diploid drones, but the bees destroy these by eating them in the larvae stage. These drones are also known as biparetal males which develop from fertilized eggs which are homozygous at sex locust. This is a subject for another day.

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