Lots of sealed QCs today, they put them up in a week

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UKTomTheBomb

New Bee
Joined
Mar 1, 2011
Messages
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Location
West Sussex
Hive Type
WBC
Number of Hives
2
Hello all, would be grateful for any advice on what next action should be!

Year two for me, they've left me scratching my head for 2 weeks on the trot..pacing around the garden wondering what to do next.

Some background on my story so far this year. Not sure if any/all of this is relevant to what is happening the hive today, but here goes...I've been trying to move from standard to 14 X 12 frames and started this process during the warm weather in March. The hive was bursting with bees and on first inspection post over-wintering they had built a great chunk of wild comb above the crown board (in which the queen had layed). So I put a 14x12 brood box & foundation above the existing standard box. Left alone and then the weather turned and it's been hard to find the right dry moment at the weekend to inspect. I went through the hive thoroughly last Monday 30th April (a week ago today) and found numerous sealed swarm cells, predominantly on the edges of frames in between the bottom and top brood boxes. Couldn't see any eggs. Bees were very grumpy and there seemed to be a great number of them, although all evidence was leading me to believe that there must have been a prime swarm leave already. I cut out all but two QCs. One stayed on a marked frame in the bottom (standard) box of the original hive and the other I moved on it's frame to a poly nuc with two extra frames of brood/stores. I wanted to make a nuc up so that my father-in-law can start this year.

Then today! to my surprise I went to inspect the main hive at about 4pm and found another load of sealed queen cells just on the 14X12 frames. There must 15 or so altogether over about 4 frames. They are all in the middle of the frames amongst sealed brood/ empty cells. They definitely weren't there a week ago, and they are all sealed. I went through the bottom brood box too and that was clear of queen cells this time. Could anyone with the expertise and experience that I don't yet have help me work out what they are up to and what my next move should be.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
if they are charged and capped, they will swarm. Removing the cells may delay them a week or so but I would say you need to preform an artificial swarm.
 
No further cells in the bottom box just means there were no worker larvae young enough to convert to queens. Cells in top box means there were larvae (or even eggs) in the top box, or she was still there and laying.

You may have damaged the one remaining queen cell at your last visit and these are emergency cells or they just built more, in addition to the one left last week. Bees will do what they do and sometimes it appears to be all wrong, but generally they are in the game of survival and probably know best.

Question is what to do now. Need to know if the other split was satisfactory (or did too many bees return to the parent hive). Decide on whether to select another sealed cell for another 'insurance' split, or pull down most (or all) of the new cells. Your call. Plenty of options, but needs doing immediately, if not sooner, as there is the risk of cast swarms.
 
Many thanks for the replies. A great relief to get some expert advice. Sounds like my plan should be to get back in the hive ASAP. Will have to be tomorrow now and I'll try and get home early from work. I'll check the situation in the existing insurance nuc first and then remove all but one of the new queen cells in the main hive. One question - given they could have only started work on these queen cells a week ago the larvae or eggs inside must have quite a bit more development to do before the first virgin queen emerges and they will cast swarm? Wondered what's the latest in the 16 day(?) cycle that they decide to convert a egg originally intended to be a worker into a queen?
 
You said you left a sealed queen cell in there last week? That is the one which may cause an initial cast. Due to emerge any time from yesterday, if not already? The others may well then follow suit, leaving your colony with few bees. As we are not aware of the full details, we are only guessing as to what might or might not happen. At best, new queen kills off all others - at worst, not many bees left.
 
Thanks - Yes I left one in there last week. Understand now that it's this one that could be leaving very soon.
 
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