The Queen might be dead….long live the Queens!
Our queen cannot be found, we just can’t see her. She has a great big yellow paint spot on her back so it’s not too hard to see her. In addition to that we have an excess queen problem. Last time we looked we had queen cells. These are cells that are prepared by the bees when the queen is not producing enough eggs, getting too old (nice huh?) or if the hive feels they might be running out of space.
The type of queen cells you have give you a clue to what might be happening. There are supersedure cells -these are as they sound cells for new successors and have a distinctive shape. They tend to be peanut shaped and are in the face of the comb.
Supersedure cell
Then there are swarm cells, these are similar but are hanging off the edge and these are prepared by the bees when they sense that there is going to have to be a move. Once the queen cell is capped this is often when the hive will swarm, they won’t always wait for the queen to emerge. This is a tad risky of course in case she’s not up to the job, but should that happen a suersedure cell will be constructed with haste!
So, what do we have? Supersedure cells, and swarm cells……this is going to take some working out with regards to the best action!
