Hive is just over 1 month old. Inspected weekly and growing nicely from a 5 frame nuc. On today’s inspection, I found what appears to be a supersedure cell. Found original queen still alive. Watched her for over 5 mins and no laying. Usually very active laying eggs.
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Everyone has different views and reasons behind their views. I would be inclined to leave it and let the bees work it out themselves.
Robert,
If she has decreased laying n there seems to still be good flows guessing the worker bees know something you don’t. Watch to see if the make others.
I’d leave it along or your hive could become queen less. Not a good plan. I’ve snuff swarm n supercedual cells. Wasn’t a good move. I just delayed the plan they had already.
Maybe someone else has other thots but that’s mine.
Gerald.
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That cell is capped. They won’t be making more, I guess. Leave them to it.
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Thanks for posting…Please keep us up to date with progress…
No plans to mess with it. I’ve read enough on here and other places to not risk it. Is it normal for a queen to not lay? I thought her behavior strange compared to her usual laying. She would stick her head into a cell and then move on to another and do the same. Very erratic seeming
I would judge the laying activity more by the numbers and patterns of eggs and larvae. Direct vision of queen laying is very nice, but variable depending on how relaxed the queen and hive are. For example, if a lot of smoke has been used, or the flow has dropped off, you may not see so much laying. Just my 2 cents…
We have had Rain daily for the past week. The cell wasn’t there last inspection. The foundation itself was just drawn out last week. Wondering if it’s not just due to the fact that a second super was added previous week. She was in the top box on last inspection. This time she was in the bottom. Supersedure cell in the top. Could she spend too much time working the lower frames and the workers in the upper frames think she isn’t laying?
I’d note that there are no eggs or larvae on that frame. Just a couple of unhatched cells along with that queen cell.
The bees may think something is amiss with your current queen.
Are there eggs elsewhere?
Didn’t search for eggs as I was searching for the queen after seeing the supersedure cell. There was plenty of uncapped brood I different stages though
Hows the pattern? sparse or pretty tightly packed?
I’ll look for eggs after work and take a pic of the frames with uncapped brood
Sounds great, very helpful, thank you.
Don’t worry too much about the eggs. If you have very young brood (little C-shaped larvae about 2mm long or less), and the pattern looks great, you have a good queen but the bees know something not obvious to us. If the pattern is spotty and scattered, that is your answer. Looking forward to the photos, thank you for sharing!
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So… got off work too late to take pics last night. Took pics this morning. 1.5 days since inspection. Found queen in upper box and on same frame as supersedure cell (which was gone)
Did the queen kill the usurper? They were actively breaking down the cell when I took the pic.
Looks like your queen ripped it down. Many reasons for this. Just wait to see if the colony builds more.
As was mentioned above, you may have put the second brood box on too soon and the Q didn’t go up there enough to leave her pheromone around making the workers think they are queenless…
Good luck and let us know what transpires.
First brood box was over 80% full. What was weird to me was the fact that the capped queen cell was on a frame that had just been drawn within the last week. There are fresh eggs and brood in all stages though so I’m just going to see