3 sealed queen cells

[snimmo243]

Checked my bees today, the stronger nuc I bought about six weeks ago had 3 sealed queen cells in it!!!!!!
Panicked tore the cells out then sought advice (wrong way round I know)

Steven

[Jon]

3 cells is probably supersedure. If the queen is still there they will likely make more. If not, you would be best to find a queen this late on in the season.
When you find queen cells the tick list should be (a) is the old queen still there and laying, (b) if not are there eggs or small larvae from which the bees can make another queen, (c) have I got spare queens in apideas or elsewhere in which case all my options are open.

There are quite a few threads on supersedure if you do a site search. It is frequent misspelled as supercedure so search on that as well. I posted recently in the blog (http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/entry.php?648-Supersedure) section about one of mine which superseded.

Some reasons for supersedure are, old queen being replaced, queen with nosema, queen with virus, queen removed too quickly from an apidea before being introduced to a nuc/colony.

Edit.
What do you know about the nucs you bought, origin, age of queens etc.

[The Drone Ranger]

Checked my bees today, the stronger nuc I bought about six weeks ago had 3 sealed queen cells in it!!!!!!
Panicked tore the cells out then sought advice (wrong way round I know)

Steven

Hi Snimmo
Are they still in the nuc or are these bees you are moving into full size hives

[greengumbo]

Checked my bees today, the stronger nuc I bought about six weeks ago had 3 sealed queen cells in it!!!!!!
Panicked tore the cells out then sought advice (wrong way round I know)

Steven

I have had this issue recently from a bought nucleus. Original queen is laying although not as well as I would like so I assume the bees are not happy with her. First 2 cells I removed thinking they were just over reacting to being shifted into a full sized hive. Then last night I found another single cell with egg. I hopefully will have mated queens to replace her with soon and one of the QCs I removed first time round is due to emerge in a few days.

Whats the best way to introduce a mated queen from a mating nuc Jon ? Just the usual methods ? I will leave her to lay in the kieler for a few weeks first and keep taking QCs away from the superseding colony in the meantime.

[Jon]

GG -I would remove the old queen and wait a few days. At that point remove carefully remove all the queen cells and introduce your new queen from the mini nuc via an introduction cage.
If your queen has been laying in the Keiler a couple of weeks you will be able to check she has a good brood pattern.

I rarely see early supersedure now since I started leaving queens in the apideas for longer before removal.

Stephen, if not supersedure, which I still think is most likely, the other possibility would be overfeeding.
If the queen has no empty cells to lay in, the colony can start to make swarm preparations

[snimmo243]

Hi Snimmo
Are they still in the nuc or are these bees you are moving into full size hives

Hi DR
Since I got them they've been in a full hive consisting of 5 smith frames and 5 commercial frames of foundation. They've drawn out all the foundation except the outside faces and when I checked yesterday there were bees on all ten frames and 8 of those frames had brood on at various stages.


3 cells is probably supersedure. If the queen is still there they will likely make more. If not, you would be best to find a queen this late on in the season.
When you find queen cells the tick list should be (a) is the old queen still there and laying, (b) if not are there eggs or small larvae from which the bees can make another queen, (c) have I got spare queens in apideas or elsewhere in which case all my options are open.

There are quite a few threads on supersedure if you do a site search. It is frequent misspelled as supercedure so search on that as well. I posted recently in the blog section about one of mine which superseded.

Some reasons for supersedure are, old queen being replaced, queen with nosema, queen with virus, queen removed too quickly from an apidea before being introduced to a nuc/colony.

Edit.
What do you know about the nucs you bought, origin, age of queens etc.


Jon
The queen was there and seems to be laying well with brood of all stages present, with regards to my knowledge of the bees background I am 100% happy with the source of my bees and the viability of the nuc when I bought it is beyond question. I have taken the syrup off the colony and put a super on to give more room, hopefully this will quell any swarming instinct (if that is what is happening). I plan to go back on Friday or Saturday to check if any more queen cells have been raised which may then point more towards supersedure, although as I stated the colony has built up very well pointing towards a strong queen but then again the bees are the experts not me :)

Steven

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi DR
Since I got them they've been in a full hive consisting of 5 smith frames and 5 commercial frames of foundation. They've drawn out all the foundation except the outside faces and when I checked yesterday there were bees on all ten frames and 8 of those frames had brood on at various stages.

Steven

Sounds good to me 8 frames of brood
If there are eggs you are probably right to take the cells down

[snimmo243]

I wasn't expecting to see anything like that yesterday, and hadn't really bothered looking for the queen as I went through the frames, then when I saw the cells on my second last frame I thought oh no I will need to go through all the frames again and find the queen, then I saw her about 2 inches away from the cells! Lucky eh?

[Jon]

What would give you good insurance here is clipping the queen.
If it is supersedure it makes no difference but if it is swarm preparations it will save you losing half your bees.
Supersedure is a funny business. I have seen them start to supersede a queen about a month old which is laying really well.
With an older queen, you can't stop them, but with a younger one removing the cells can sometimes take the urge off them.
It is one of those topics where you will read a lot of complete bull on the internet bee forums written by people who have rarely seen it.
I have seen quite a bit of supersedure but it can still be very hard to make the judgement call between supersedure and swarming.
For example, the stuff you read about supersedure cells always being in the middle of a frame is bull. They can be anywhere.
Earlier this afternoon I checked the nuc with the old queen I wrote about in my blog and there is another supersedure queen just emerged in the past 24 hours. I saw the open cell and the new queen on the comb. It is about a month since I rescued the old queen from a 2 queen colony.
The cell this new queen came out of was in a gap between the side bar and the comb, ie right at the edge rather than in the middle of the frame.
Both queens old and new are present. Hopefully this new one will mate within a couple of weeks but I have spare queens in apideas for any contingency.

[snimmo243]

Went to check on bees yesterday, no queen cells, loads of eggs and bees had moved into super so hopefully this was swarming behaviour
Steven