This morning I went to check on the my hive. I just got it this year. My last inspection was last week and everything looked good. Queen has been laying a good pattern and there were no obvious signs of disease. I didn’t see any queen cells at that time. The hive seems strong. This morning I found a lot of the bees on the front of the hive blocking the entrance and the queen crawling around on the ground. I was able to place her back on the entrance to the hive. I’m not sure if she made it back inside though. In the afternoon it looked like the entire hive was outside on the box. More bees went back inside now, but there is still bees blocking the entrance. Does anyone have an idea if they are about to swarm or what it might be?
Hi Jason, welcome to the forum.
Apart from swarming preparations, bees sometimes beard out the front on hot days, which continues into the night, on account that bees can’t collect water in the dark.
There is a third option: the colony could be getting ready to abscond. This happened to a former client. His bees were getting ready to abscond on account of hive beetles going through the process of sliming the hive out. This was a couple of days after he harvested the honey. It was a mixture of squashed brood in the flow frames & honey flooding onto the brood, which gave the beetles plenty of options to start laying eggs. The bees were powerless to stop them.
A fourth option would be if honey flooded onto the brood, which causes the bees to beard out the front while other bees clean up the mess.
The only way to be certain about what’s going on would be to do a brood inspection.
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Jeff thanks for the response. I was able to do an inspection this morning. The bees went back into the hive last night. I did find several queen cells, 3 I believe. I did see my original back in the hive. However I did see a younger smaller queen in there as well. I also noticed the new bees coming out of their cells are white. What does that mean? There is still plenty of larvee in there. However due to the weather I couldn’t see if there were any eggs. Does this mean they are trying to get a new queen because the original one isn’t good anymore?
You’re welcome Jason.
If you saw a young smaller queen, that could indicate that the colony is about to swarm. Otherwise she could be a supersedure queen, which would mean the colony is going to stay put.
I haven’t done enough reading on supersedure queens, so I’m not exactly sure on how it all works. I thought the bees only make one supersedure cell. Then on the other hand, if a colony decides to swarm, they usually make a lot more than 3. On top of that they usually swarm before the first queen emerges. Therefore I’m leaning towards the young queen being a supersedure queen.
I haven’t seen young bees emerge white before. They are normally smaller, furry & a lighter color than mature bees.
I had one experience where two queens occupied one hive. I found this out because I split the hive. The split had a queen, so therefore I expected the other portion to make a new queen. Consequently the other portion didn’t make a new queen because it already had one. The first queen must have been the new one, on account that it really outperformed the second one.
My conclusion was that the old & new queen must work together until such times that the colony decides to do away with the old one.
They often make 3 or 4, and they differ from swarm cells in that they are usually in the middle of a frame of brood 
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Hi & thank you Dawn for clearing that up. I was thinking last night that I should have tagged you on account that you’d know a bit more about supersedure queens.
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Thank you for your vote of confidence, @JeffH. I learned about them from necessity. Here in California, around 70% of our feral colonies are Africanized bees. If you have a supersedure, you need to recognize it pretty quickly, or your hive will be incredibly hostile within a few months!
In the UK, they didn’t really matter much most of the time, so no real need to differentiate them from swarm cells. Except that supersedure queens tend not to swarm, as you know. In California, it is vital to recognize it and have a plan to deal with it
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Thank you for the information. So far no swarming has occurred and the bees have been in and out of the hive as they normally would.
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So they are not swarming and appear to be in and out of the hive. They were a little upset more than usual when I was doing the inspection, especially when I got to the frame where the young queen was. What is supersedure?
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It happens when the colony decides that the existing queen is not high enough quality. There may be several factors affecting their decision. She may be older and not laying efficiently, or laying more drones than they would like. She may not be producing enough queen substance (pheromone) to keep the hive happy. She may be injured etc, etc.
When the colony decides that the queen is not to their liking, they choose several eggs or very young larvae to make into new queens. Instead of feeding the chosen bee bread after a few days, they continue feeding them royal jelly, ensuring that the larva will become a queen. Once the larva is ready to pupate, she will seal her cell, making a peanut-shaped protruding cell on the frame. If the queen was made by the colony with supersedure in mind, this supsedure queen cell will usually be near the middle of the frame, whereas swarm cells are often near the bottoms of frames, and there may be dozens of them.
So supercedure is when a queen is made by the colony to take over from another older queen, without swarming.
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I have observed obvious changes for the better in the performance of some colonies, which I put down to supersedure queens. I’m sure that more hives have 2 queens than the one I spoke about earlier. It’s just that I don’t split like that as a rule. It was for a client. As it turned out, I finished up with the new one. Her performance was that good that I used her to breed from, until one day I must have accidentally killed her. I now have her progeny to breed from.
Another good queen that I breed from, which I still have is progeny from a queen from @cathiemac
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