Queen piping

[Mellifera Crofter]

Does anybody know at what age a queen can start to pipe in her cell?

On Wednesday I discovered a lot of closed queen cells in a hive I checked the previous week and saw only 'queen cups but empty'. Perhaps I wasn't thorough enough. I separated the queen from the brood and returned on Thursday to sort all those queen cells. I left a large daughter hive with an open queen cell but also also created a two-frame nuc with the best and largest capped cell. The grubs in all the queen cells I squashed were only tiny little white things - yet on my way home with the nuc in the back of the car I heard a queen piping! I heard her again yesterday when I transferred the frames to a poly nuc. I suppose this cell must be a lot older than the others but still - I was really surprised hearing the piping.

Kitta

[Mellifera Crofter]

I must have overlooked fairly large queen cells on last week's inspection. I've just been to the daughter hive in the out apiary and found a newly emerged queen - so the the queen in the cell I brought home with me might also be close to emerging.

I'm still curious to know when they start piping.

[Jon]

It must be within a day or two from emergence as they use their wings and they are not fully formed earlier than that.

[Mellifera Crofter]

Thanks Jon. I'm lucky then that the mother queen hadn't swarmed yet - but I think they still want to swarm. I could only see queen cups in her hive - no eggs apart from one in a cup. She is still there. I saw her.
Kitta