For the less experienced amongst us .....

[gavin]

Here's a wee query. And I know that I'll not be able to stop the more experienced chipping in, but let's give this a go anyway. Chip in whoever you are. Something you might see in a year such as this. I saw it last weekend and this is what it looks like on my phone camera.

What is going on, and what should I have done?

http://www.sbai.org.uk/images/frame_query.jpg

[kevboab]

Is that a pic of a frame out of a nuc by any chance ???

[gavin]

No, it was in a full-sized box but it probably should have been in a nuc box as it was about half a box of bees. A split from a queen cell raising colony at the end of May.

[HJBee]

Is that an emergency cell in amongst drone size cells in the middle of the frame?

[Jimbo]

I'll wait before posting my reply as I have something similar

[gavin]

Yes! Two emergency (or possibly attempted supercedure) cells, one sealed and one open. A central patch of drone brood when the other splits created at the same time were romping away with mostly worker brood and some small patches of drone. This colony had no worker brood at all, and no eggs.

As you can see there is a nice, large cleared area for laying - created by workers optimistic about a new queen. They laid in plenty of pollen around it but have now decided to preserve it by overlaying a little honey.

So, what is happening - and what should the beekeeper have done? What I did isn't necessarily the best or only answer of course.

[gavin]

Notable that the pollen is all round the brood nest. This is supposed to be an Amm trait but the colony isn't pure Amm. Not relevant to the questions above, but I thought that I'd throw that in.

G.

[gavin]

Is that an emergency cell in amongst drone size cells in the middle of the frame?

Considering this poster had been a beekeeper for only a couple of hours at the time of posting, I think that they deserve special congratulation.

[HJBee]

Which I would nicely deflect to say that I attribute that to an excellent mentor and local association with a lot of excellent Beekeepers happy to educate. 😊

Now to the task of what should be done. Can't make out if the Emergency Cell is new or if it has hatched out. Can you give a hint and I'll have a go at next steps.

[kevboab]

At this time of year I would probably be happy to just cull and unite if I didn't have a spare queen sitting around in an apidea. Times getting on and weather still dreich.

[Trog]

I would unite unless I found a good queen cell in another colony from which I was happy to breed, in which case - here but not necessarily in the central belt or mainland highlands - I would cull the ones in the droney hive and put the frame with the good qc into it.

[gavin]

Now to the task of what should be done. Can't make out if the Emergency Cell is new or if it has hatched out. Can you give a hint and I'll have a go at next steps.

In case it isn't obvious to everyone, this is a split that had been left with a good queen cell and presumably the queen hatched and failed to mate properly in the wet weather. She eventually started laying unfertilised drone eggs in the middle of the area which had been prepared for her. Not laying workers, too regular. By the time I looked in there were no eggs and - quite possibly but not certainly - no queen. She may be gone (killed, died) or may be just undernourished and skulking somewhere.

The emergency or supercedure cells in a colony with no worker brood at all and alongside drone brood? Wouldn't trust them. Quite likely to be drone too. So even though the sealed cell was only recently sealed, it doesn't make any difference. It had a queen recently so wouldn't have the laying worker problem and could have been requeened. I did have a spare in an Apidea but decided not to use it as, as Kev noted, the season is getting late and particularly because I wasn't 100% sure that there was no queen present.

[Jon]

I would introduce a test frame to be 100% sure there is no queen and then there are various options open after that.
Introduce a ripe queen cell
Introduce a queen
Add sealed brood to keep the numbers up
Combine via newspaper with another colony, being some of the options.

I would stake my mortgage that queen cell is not viable.

[gavin]

Would you protect the queen cell if that was the way you were going?

I did a newspaper unite with a similar colony the other day belonging to a beginner, but that one didn't have the emergency cells. In the case of the colony above, I did the option Jon didn't mention. Shook the bees out some distance (100m maybe) away. There were colonies either side of the original site which could benefit from the bees, and I thought that would be the best way to deal with the risk of a drone laying queen still present. After shaking them out there were some little tussles going on in the fuss at the entrance of both neighbouring colonies - nothing lethal I think, but you could see the strangers being submissive. Plus a pile of bees clustering about a foot in front of where their hive used to be. By the next lunchtime all was quiet, all the bees had found new homes or otherwise vanished, and there were no dead bees at the front of the neighbouring colonies.

My decision was partly based on having too many rather small colonies I suppose. And a reluctance to spend time on the test Jon mentioned.

[Jon]

I read a lot of stuff about cell protectors but i usually just introduce a cell without protection.
If the queen is about to emerge they are usually happy with it.
When I remove a queen from an apidea I just put another ripe cell in immediately.

Too many small colonies is a curse.
Some of our people with swarmy stock end up splitting their bees to oblivion (of collecting all the casts) and are sitting with about 8 two frame nucs from an original colony or two.

Shaking out a drone layer is a good option especially if it is full of older bees.

[HJBee]

That's exactly what I would have suggested too 😉. Aye right!!

[gavin]

I see that you've mastered beekeeping *and* the local lingo, all in one week!

[Jimbo]

The suns out today so last chance for the suspect drone layers. They are about to be shook out today. I'll try and take a photo of the frames but they do look similar to Gavin's