Bl##dy weather ...

[Little_John]

I've been trying to inspect one rather difficult (but much loved) colony for some 10 days now, but this one is guaranteed to go ballistic whenever there's more than one cloud in the sky.

Yesterday was a little overcast, but the forecast was 'dry', so I thought I'd chance it. It's just as well I did. Classifying them by appearance rather than function, there were 2 supercedure (I prefer that spelling) cells on one frame and 8 swarm cells on another, with larvae nicely curled up inside. No sooner had I established this, than the heavens opened up, and it han't stopped raining since. There's even a severe weather warning (Rain ++) in force for today. The weather's a mixed blessing, I suppose, 'cause whilst it's raining they ain't gonna swarm, but as soon as it stops ...

Thursday looks like the first rainless day this week, looks like I'll have to be up early to deal with this box of bees.

Hope the weather's better where you guys are.

LJ

[Jon]

Would be highly unusual to have supersedure cells and swarm cells in a colony at the same time.

[Little_John]

Would be highly unusual to have supersedure cells and swarm cells in a colony at the same time.

Indeed - that's why I was so careful in my wording: "Classifying them by appearance rather than function" - i.e. the 'supercedure' cells being in the centre of one comb, with the 'swarm' cells hanging off the bottom edge of another.

My guess is that - most likely - they're all swarm cells. At least, I'm going to treat them as such. I wouldn't have expected kosher supercedure cells to appear until later in the year ... although (in the words of Pooh-Bear) "you never can tell with bees".

LJ

[fatshark]

The weather is cr@p in the Midlands as well. Both my bee suits are hanging in the airing cupboard drying out after inspections over the bank holiday w/e. I had to make up eight 3 frame mating nucs, postponed it for a day because the weather looked dodgy, only to find it was worse the following day. I had three double brood colonies open harvesting brood and bees. Fortunately the bees were all reasonably well behaved ...

[Jon]

You can get supersedure cells anywhere on the frame. The thing about them being in the middle of a frame is one of the many beekeeping myths propagated in various bee books. I have often found a single supersedure cell between the sidebar and the comb where there is a gap.
I have a photograph of two supersedure cells on a pollen frame.

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