Brought a frame of brood from outdoor hive & put it in indoor observation hive. Lots of capped brood, a few eggs & a few larvae - lots of house bees.
Girls quickly started making queen cells. They ended up with about 10 âswarm cellsâ vertically along outside of frame. #1 queen hatched - nice medium size & dark. Just before the others started hatching she swarmed.
2nd queen visual. Very small queen, dark & looks good. The next day or two she swarmed!?
Rest of queens hatched but I didnt observe. #3 queen visualized - very small & much lighter in color than other two. At same time I notice they are making two more queen cells?! supercedure - kind of in middle of frame.
What is going on? Why would they immediately make supercedure cells after 10 queens & two swarms?
Can provide pics if neededđđź
Iâm thinking your bees didnât like this new home, maybe? Iâm very curious to hear more tho - is this indoor observation hive placed indoors too? and how big is it?
Hello Cat, and welcome to the forum where you will find lots of reading and folks will ing to give you advice. Pics are always welcome and can give us a heap of information that you may have missed as nothing.
Iâm thinking along with @Eva that the hive is probably way to small for a hive to be happy calling home. Also the natural instinct is that if there are queen cells about to emerge the the colony will swarm and the existing queen will leave along with about 1/2 the colony.
I have seen many observation hives that are simply to small for a colony to stay put, and they wonât, the scout bees will find a bigger place to call home. Thinking that leaving the queen cells to develop is not helping with the issue gut the available space for the colony to live in is the real issue you have.
In my sub tropical climate when I do a split of my 8 frame hives the split goes straight into an 8 frame brood box where the bees settle in. In a 5 frame nuc box once a queen is mated and laying then supercedure cells soon get made which is a signal that swarming will happen without managing the colony.
Cheers
Thanks for the replies guys! Have had bees in here for 3 years with no issues like this?? All queens are virgins - so why these two supersedures? This queen will mate and lay her replacement?
Okay - here goes!
!
and how big is it?