I am in Madagascar and new to bee keeping. I did a successful cut out of a hive 1 week ago. We figured we got the queen since the bees seemed happy in their new home but on our first hive check at 1 week, there are multiple capped queen cells. Is this normal after a cutout with a lost queen? The hive seems healthy with bees coming and going. New comb is being built. But I couldn’t find any eggs in brood comb. I am assuming they won’t swarm this soon and it is just an emergency requeening?
I think it is a pretty safe assumption that they are emergency queen cells - in all the cutting and rubber band fitting of the comb to the frames it is possible that your queen was killed or damaged.
Check the hive again for eggs or brood in a few weeks. It will take your new queen at least 7 days to emerge and then has to mature, mate, and start laying so give it some time.
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Thanks for this… we are about 4 weeks since the cutout. I have checked the hive a few times. The first time we saw queens cells and left them 2 weeks. After another 2 weeks we saw some more queen cells but they have been opened. There is lots of honey, bees are making new comb. There is a bit of drone brood but I didn’t see any eggs or a queen on the last check and no new queen cells other than the open ones. I am thinking to wait a bit longer and see what happens. Maybe the new queen is still mating? My fear is seeing new drone comb and no eggs… but perhaps I need to just wait a bit longer… I have been replacing the elastics holding the comb with zip ties since the honey is making them heavy and the bees seem to like to chew through them…