Seeing into queen cups /cells?

When I find queen cups in my hive, I try and peer inside to see if there's anything in them, and as they have always appeared to be empty I then tear them down. How obvious would it be if they are not empty - e.g. if they have only an egg or very young larvae in them? I'm not convinced I would really be able to see egg/larvae in them until it was much further along. I've tried turning frames upside down so's I can see down into the cup more easily, but very wary of holding the frame at an angle to the sun in case of colapses!

Hi Anne,

When I do hive inspections I have a quick look up inside some queen cups. I don't bother checking for eggs, what I am looking for to see is if the cup is charged. This is when there is white brood food and a larvae inside the cup. The bees will also start to extend the open cup. It is easily seen. I check my hives every 7 days through the swarm season for these charged cups. When do see any I don't leave them but do my swarm control method which involves taking the best looking charged cups for raising new queens.

Jimbo

Thanks for your v quick and v clear reply!

I check weekly, but never having seen anything other than sealed queen cell or empty queen cup I was wondering if I was cheerily dismissing charged queen cups as empty becuase I couldn't see into them properly.

Hi Anne,

Another clue to the queen preparing to swarm that you can see early in the season. When you see the queen cups it you break them open gently with the hive tool you can sometimes see the bees have polished the inside of the cups. They do this prior to the queen laying an egg in the cup. It does not mean they will definetly swarm. The clearest indication is the charged cell.
To see inside the cups clearly if there is a lot of bees on the frame, is to gently breath on them. This will make the bees move away from any area you want to inspect.

Jimbo

.... though I suspect that Anne's breath is as sweet as anything and might not have the same effect ;)

You'll notice charged cups when they are there. Longer than queen cups, not sealed, and look as if they've been injecting PVA wood glue into them (with a little curled grub floating on it).

G.

I never break them off. so long as they are on the bottom of the frames.
I keep brood on 20 frames in 2 magazines. The ladies prefer their queen cells on the bottom of the frames in the top magazine.
So as long as there are plenty of frames with empty queen cups in the top magazine I only need to check the middle 8 frames under the supers (the outer ones are food).
If they fill a sneaky single cup it is only to replace the boss and not to swarm, so I don't want to prevent that.

OK, so even I (!) couldn't miss the difference between a charged queen cup and an empty one (welll, maybe!). That's very reassuring!

Callum, that's an interesting tip. I've been tearing them down becuase it's actually quite difficult & time consuming to peer into them if you're thinking you're looking for an egg /something difficult to spot, and I didn't want to be looking into the same ones every week.....I feel like a bit of a wally now!

Sadly Gavin, they do scuttle off when I breathe on them. Rude little buzzers that they are!

Hi Anne,
everyone makes so many mistakes beekeeping I wouldn't worry. Mine was teating off the cups, they just find better hidden places to put them...
The method I described is not bee proof, but if there are ten or so cups centrally on your middle frames in the upper brood box that is where you will find your swarm cells about >95% of the time.
If you have to look through 20 hives on a Sunday afternoon thats good enough. If you have 2 colonies you can examine every frame, but that is alot of disruption for the bees.

Hi Callum
A few days ago I was at a Workshop with the Regional Bee Inspectors talking about Foul brood disease among other things--they even brought real diseased frames! which was scary and at the
same time not as dramatic as I expected. During discussions on Stand Still Orders and such I had the impression that American Foul Brood is taken more seriously then EFB; that one is controlled while the
other is merely managed.
What is the Policy on EFB and AFB where you are?