Empty queen cells

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Heather

Queen Bee
Joined
Dec 7, 2008
Messages
4,131
Reaction score
128
Location
Newick, East Sussex
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
6
Have a lovely colony which finally decided to go into swarm mode.

5 well formed deep queen cells but all capped. I used the newest looking one and did artificial swarm, leaving 1 queen cell and removed the other 4 to my incubator.

Day due to hatch... nothing - waited 24 hrs...nothing. I gave them another 48 hours ..nothing ..so decided to investigate. The beautiful cells didn't even have a larvae in, no royal jelly.. zilch.
Opened the hive with cell in... bees not happy! Need to re-join.
I haven't heard of this before. Why all that work on NOTHING. Just to wind me up??:toetap05:
 
I put a post on a few weeks ago about a similar thing. In my case there was royal jelly in the sealed cells but that was all. It is really frustrating trying to deal with all the unusual things the bees seem to be doing this season.
 
.
I have not met empty Queen cells which are normal looking.
Dead Queen cells I gave met often. Bees do not open those cells.

What guides cell buiding if there is no larva inside. Sounds impossible that bees just build them for fun.
 
Last edited:
Seems the bees are more clever than some of their beeks. They are just having a practice, or dry run, and are waiting for better weather before actually swarming?

Question that will now never be answered is whether they would have swarmed and left no new queen 'in the oven'.

Somehow, I doubt she would have gone. Too clever to do that.....
 
No, Finman. I have never seen before ..5 perfect 2" queen cells.. dimples ++ nothing in at all.
I am doing an exam Thursday.. 2 Master Beekeepers with me for 3 hours.. will explore this behaviour.
 
Have a lovely colony which finally decided to go into swarm mode.

5 well formed deep queen cells but all capped. I used the newest looking one and did artificial swarm, leaving 1 queen cell and removed the other 4 to my incubator.

Day due to hatch... nothing - waited 24 hrs...nothing. I gave them another 48 hours ..nothing ..so decided to investigate. The beautiful cells didn't even have a larvae in, no royal jelly.. zilch.
Opened the hive with cell in... bees not happy! Need to re-join.
I haven't heard of this before. Why all that work on NOTHING. Just to wind me up??:toetap05:

Four !!!, i had thirty ,all capped, all empty

Finman never seen it before either, i had done an AS open QC about Day 7 , they then made about four secondries queen cells that i knocked down at day 14leaving the good capped queen cell..........looked 7 days later for emerged queen cell to see one emerged queen cell and thirty perfect queen cells, all cappped, all empty
 
Last edited:
I haven't heard of this before. Why all that work on NOTHING. Just to wind me up??:toetap05:

This is about as close as I can say I've come to what you describe.
It is a cell from a batch that emerged in my incubator and was overdue. I split open the cell and, at first sight, it appeared to be what you describe. However, I found a dead larva at the bottom of the cell. Are you sure there was not a small larva in there that died?
 

Attachments

  • 2015-06-02 12.07.00.jpg
    2015-06-02 12.07.00.jpg
    168.8 KB · Views: 26
No, they were pristine... Ah well, having to rejoin the art. swarm...have too many anyway.
 
Sure you got your timings right Heather could have emerged a day earlier and the bees resealed the cell. Best double check with a test frame before any combining.
 
No Tom,
I left one in the hive but the rest were in an incubator so nowhere to run to. I opened them when well past their 'sell by date'.
I know a reseal when I see one. These were totally unoccupied, but beautifully made. Capped to perfection.
 
No Tom,

I left one in the hive but the rest were in an incubator so nowhere to run to. I opened them when well past their 'sell by date'.

I know a reseal when I see one. These were totally unoccupied, but beautifully made. Capped to perfection.


Must be worth grafting a Q or two and seeing what happens: seedless apples and grapes had to start somewhere. No good if they swarm on an EMPTY sealed cell though :- /. But looks like they haven't here.
 
Discovered today that the queen cell that we were waiting to hatch in our queen less colony was completely empty. It is turning out to be a really weird season.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top