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I have Queen Cells what do I do?

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I often get customers call to say they have queen cells and what should they do. After an often long conversation, I find out that they don’t have queen cells but they have “queen cups”. Queen cups are often found in a colony, usually along the bottom of the frame, on closer inspection you will see they don’t have any eggs in them. It’s only when you see an egg in one that you need to pay attention. Have you heard the term “Charged Queen Cell”? – this is when a queen cup has an egg placed in it and royal jelly, it may still be cup form or extended more like the peanut shaped queen cell you should be familiar with, and it is not sealed but open on the end as the larvae is still being fed.

So, just for clarification: empty queen cups are of no concern, you will regularly see them in a colony, often around the edges of the frame, but any queen cup or cell that has an egg in it or royal jelly in it, is something to be concerned about. It means you need to be aware and pay attention as you may need to take action.

When you do see charged queen cells, what you don’t do is panic and start taking them all down. Queen cells in a colony do not necessarily mean the colony is preparing to swarm, they could be supercedure or emergency queen cells. Before any action is taken you must first work out why the bees are making queen cells.

There are three types of queen cell – Supercedure, Emergency and Swarm. Below I have looked at each one individually with a view to explaining what they are and what you should do in each case.

Supercedure cells – These are queen cells that are produced because the existing queen needs to be replaced for some reason. It may be that she is getting old and not producing enough pheromone. Or, she may not be laying as well as she used to, maybe she is running out of sperm. Whatever the reason our bees are so clever that they know that they need to replace the existing queen and therefore they will start to make supercedure cells. These are often, but not always, found on the face of the frame, in the middle or higher up and they often make them in small groups of 2 or 3. Having said that do not assume that queen cells on the bottom or side of the frame are swarm cells, if there are just a few of them they may well be supercedure cells. Supercedure cells are also more likely to be made on frame with younger wax rather than older wax.

If you do find supercedure cells leave the bees to it, they know their needs better than us. The new queen(s) will emerge and one will be chosen as the new queen for the colony. The existing queen is still present, so you will have eggs throughout the whole supercedure process. The new queen will take her mating flights, when completed she will also start to lay; if you are lucky enough you will have the pleasure of seeing both queens, mother and daughter, working together on one frame. Once the new queen is laying the bees will focus all their attention onto her and start to ignore her mother. Eventually the mother will die, the daughter will head the colony on her own. The colony will not have a break in brood and will carry on with the new queen as if nothing has happened, your honey harvest will not be affected in this colony, likewise the temperament of the colony should have been the same all the way through. If you are not doing weekly inspections, or if you only inspect a few brood frames to check for eggs, you may even miss the supercedure happening. One day you may find your queen is no longer marked, the reality is that is not actually the queen you thought it was, it’s her daughter!

Emergency cells – These are produced by a colony when they are rendered queen-less and therefore in an emergency situation. The queen may have accidentally been badly damaged/squashed during an inspection without you knowing. Or, if she was unknowingly on the frame that you had removed for inspection, she may have simply flown off – I have seen queens fly from a frame that was being passed around at a beginners course. The frame had been out of the colony for too long, the queen was not happy so she took off. I have also seen a queen walking up the outside of the hive next to the one I am working on. What had happened here is that the queen had walked off the frame that was lent up against the colony, she had walked down the hive stand and onto the other hive. It’s worth mentioning that I had not actually seen her on the frame, I would never have sat it outside of the hive if I had. I also recall another occasion when I found emergency cells in a colony where the queen had just disappeared since the previous inspection. This was in my early days of beekeeping, feeling confused as to what had happened to the queen, and on this occasion I was working the bees on my own so had no one to ask, I decided the best cause of action was to leave the bees to it and I put the colony back together. I put the crown board on and as I picked up the roof I saw the queen, nicely pressed like a dried flower, on the roof batten. The colony had previously been inspected by my mentor. So, no matter how many years we have been working with bees even the best of us still make rookie mistakes!!!

These are often, but not always, smaller than swarm or supercedure cells. The reason they can be smaller is that, in their need to make a new queen quickly they may use an older larvae. The older larvae will have originally been fed as a new worker larvae and only fed royal jelly for the first 2 days after hatching. Due to this often the emergency queens themselves are also sometimes smaller, this does not mean she won’t be as good but it may be more difficult to spot her. Not all emergency cells will be made from older larvae, if the bees can, they will make queens from younger larvae, and therefore these will still be being fed royal jelly which will continue until the queen cell is sealed.

Emergency cells do often hang from the frame slightly differently. The way to know if they are emergency or supercedure is to look for the original queen and eggs. If you have fresh laid eggs; a new laid egg will be sitting upright on the bottom of the cell and not laid on its side, then you most likely have a queen even if you can’t see her, therefore the queen cells are supercedure not emergency. If you don’t have any eggs you can probably make the assumption the colony is queen-less, therefore these are emergency queen cells. A queen-less colony often shows a change in temperament and noise. A colony that has raised emergency queen cells will have a break in the brood pattern, just as a colony that swarmed does, however there will be no reduction of bee numbers other than the normal mortality rate. All being well your new queen will emerge and within a couple of weeks of her starting her mating flights you will find eggs. To read more about timings of queens coming in to lay see this page

Swarm Cells – If you are seeing multiple queen cells in your colony during spring and summer then they are most likely swarm cells. When the bees decide to swarm, usually as a result of not enough space for their queen to lay and for their stores, the bees will start to produce lots and lots of queen cells. You may have 10 or 30 queen cells, I had so many in one colony that I stopped counting them, I gave up when I hit 40! I have also seen colonies with only 6 or so swarm cells but truthfully this is rare. What is a consistency is that they are nearly always found towards the bottom of the frame and down the sides, that’s not to say they won’t be seen in the middle of the frame. In a double brooded colony they are almost certainly going be hanging off the bottom of the frames in the top box. If you do have swarm cells you definitely need to take action, before you can decide what to do you need to work out if the bees have already swarmed, or if the original queen is still there.

To read more about swarming – prevention and control see separate post.

Bailey Comb Change

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This sounds like quite a complex procedure however its really not. This is a way of changing all the frames in one go.

You will need a new brood box with a full set of new frames and foundation. Place this new box on top of your existing brood box, put a feeder and syrup feed on top and let the bees start drawing out the comb. Once the bees have drawn out some of the comb find the queen and place her up in the top brood box. Put a queen excluder in-between the two boxes, so that the queen cannot get back down.

You can use a split board if you have one; this is a queen excluder with an entrance on it. If you do use a split board open the entrance and close off the bottom entrance. You can, if you prefer, rotate the floor so the bottom entrance is now at the other side, the bees will leave by that entrance but return to the other side of the hive and find the new entrance above. Close the bottom entrance the following day. If you decide to not rotate the floor but just close the entrance in the position it is in, the bees will find the exit so don’t worry.

Equally, if you don’t have a split board just use a queen excluder and the original entrance. The advantage of using the split board is that the bees won’t travel through the lower box storing pollen around the brood that is still down there. Instead, they will store pollen in the top box where the queen is now laying. Make sure you put a feeder with syrup on the bees and keep feeding for as long as needed.

After 3 weeks all the brood will have emerged from the frames in the lower box and you can now remove it along with the queen excluder. The wax can be rendered or burn along with the frames.

How do I change my Brood Frames

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Brood comb must be replaced regularly in the hive to help with colony hygiene and disease control. Opinions on this topic do vary but the NBU (National Bee Unit) say that brood comb should be used for no more than 3 years. The old comb should be rendered or burnt.

There are a few different ways you can change the comb. Below I have detailed 3 common one. The one thing they all have in common is that you will need to offer your bees syrup to help then to draw out the new foundation you have given them.

Replacement of just 1 third of your brood frames early in the season

It is suggested that you replace 1/3 of your brood frames each year, this way you will never have frames older than 3 year.

This is relatively easy to do but its not a quick way of changing frames. The process involves you gradually moving the frames you want to change so that at the end of the season they are sitting at the outer walls of the brood box.   The following spring you can remove these frames and replace them with new frames and foundation. Remember to feed them syrup, especially important if changing the frames in spring when the season is only just getting going.

Bailey Comb Change

This sounds like quite a complex procedure however its really not. This is a way of changing all the frames in one go.

You will need a new brood box with a full set of new frames and foundation. Place this new box on top of your existing brood box, put a feeder and syrup feed on top and let the bees start drawing out the comb. Once the bees have drawn out some of the comb find the queen and place her up in the top brood box. Put a queen excluder in-between the two boxes, so that the queen cannot get back down.

You can use a split board if you have one; this is a queen excluder with an entrance on it. If you do use a split board open the entrance and close off the bottom entrance. You can, if you prefer, rotate the floor so the bottom entrance is now at the other side, the bees will leave by that entrance but return to the other side of the hive and find the new entrance above. Close the bottom entrance the following day. If you decide to not rotate the floor but just close the entrance in the position it is in, the bees will find the exit so don’t worry.

Equally, if you don’t have a split board just use a queen excluder and the original entrance. The advantage of using the split board is that the bees won’t travel through the lower box storing pollen around the brood that is still down there. Instead, they will store pollen in the top box where the queen is now laying. Make sure you put a feeder with syrup on the bees and keep feeding for as long as needed.

After 3 weeks all the brood will have emerged from the frames in the lower box and you can now remove it along with the queen excluder. The wax can be rendered or burn along with the frames.

Shook Swarm

This is a very effective way of quickly changing all your brood frames and will result in removing all pathogens from the hive, it can however be quite stressful for the bees, so you need to ensure you have a good quantity of young bees in the colony before you carry out the shook swarm. 

The best time to do the shook swarm is late spring, you should have plenty of young bees by this point. The method is quite simple: Lift your brood box off the floor and move it to one side. Place a queen excluder on the floor then place a a new clean brood box, containing brand new frames and foundation, on top of the queen excluder. Remove 5 or 6 of the center frames to create a gap.  Now go to your original brood chamber and remove the first frame. Shake all the bees off this frame into the gap you created in your new brood box. Repeat with all the frames, look for the queen as you go. Personally I would lift the queen off the frame and place her into the new brood box, you can just shake her in if you prefer. If you didn’t see the Queen throughout the procedure do check the walls of the old brood box and make sure she is not there.  Shake any bees left on the brood box walls into your new box too.

Gently replace the 5 or 6 frames back into the gap in your new brood box, place the crownboard on top along with a feeder full of syrup.  Keep this feeder topped up until your bees have sufficient stores in their new frames.  The queen excluder on the floor will stop the queen from leaving and taking the bees with her. Once your queen is happily laying you can remove the queen excluder (2 weeks is a good bet)

The old frames you removed that have stores in them can be extracted and the wax rendered, any frames with brood in are best burnt. If you do extract stores from these frames, make sure you are confident they are stores of honey and not syrup that you may have offered in your winter preparations.

Carrying out a shook swarm on a colony with a good volume of young bees will very quickly work the new foundation in your frames, you may be quite surprised how quickly this happens. Do ensure they have a constant supply of syrup.

Why did my Honey Bees Abscond?

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Recently I have taken a number of calls from beekeepers who are telling me their bees have absconded. So what does mean and why is it happening?

Let’s look at what Absconding means first – This is when the entire colony leaves the hive, they will be preparing in advance of going, just like they would if they were swarming. The queen will be slimmed down so she can fly, the workers will have scouted for a new place to move to and they will fill their stomachs with honey when they go. But, unlike a swarm, the whole colony will go leaving not a single bee in the hive. You may find you still have some sealed brood and stores left behind but that will be all.

So, the next question is why have they gone? Well the truth is that there is still very little understood about why bees abscond. There are however some observations that can draw us to certain conclusions for individual cases. It is known that certain conditions have been present when bees have absconded:

  • Nectar dearth – a severe shortage in nectar flow which will inevitably see a reduction of stored food in a colony, especially a colony that is growing fast.
  • Predators – if the colony is constantly under attach by predators, this could be wasps, hornets, ants, wax moths etc
  • Constant disturbance – if the colony is constantly being disturbed by animals, humans or even noise, this can be a driver in seeing them move on.
  • Sever hot weather – overheating in the hive, especially a hive that is overcrowded.
  • Varroa – High levels of varroa cause a lot of stress on a colony.

Honeybees have a natural instinct for survival so you can see why the reasons above make sense – moving to a new home due to lack of forage in their current location, or being invaded by other insects does sound like a good plan! Equally if the bees were being constantly disturbed you can see why they may like it and decide to move home.

Hot weather will generally see our bees bearding. This is where they hang outside of the entrance of the hive. It has been reported, that in prolonged extreme temperatures, the bees have been known to leave the hive and not return. However I have heard of this happening in the UK.

The point about varroa is defiantly worth taking onboard. It is known that in un-managed colonies high levels of varroa have been found in whats left of the brood nest. So, it would not be wrong to suspect that the same can happen in managed colonies where the varroa levels are high too.

I hope that this in someway provides maybe an insight into what happened to your bees. There maybe somethings you can do to mitigate it happening again.

How to requeen an Aggressive colony

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Before I start on the topic of how to requeen an aggressive colony I would just like to talk a little about what we term as Aggressive.  I have been working with honeybees for over 12 years and in all of those years I have only ever encountered 2 colonies that were “Aggressive”. One of those was not a colony we owned but one we did end up with and it was troublesome to requeen. I have also experienced bees that “buzz” and “bounce” off you, and whilst this is perhaps not the most desirable trait it definitely does not fall under the description of “Aggression”. Often there is a reason for the colony behaviour. If, your normally nice bees suddenly turn nasty almost overnight then there is probably a very good reason.

The other experience I encountered with a colony that was extremely aggressive was with one of our own colonies; it was on a pollination contract at the time and it just went for me literally straight away.  I can recall there being of lot of activity as I removed the roof and as soon as I lifted the crownboard that was it.  I am pleased to say that I have never experienced that again, and I hope I never do!  I did find out why the bees were so aggressive towards me and actually they had every right to be as they were defending themselves. They were pollinating raspberries and, rather sadly the grower did not have orders for the forthcoming fruit crop, so they turned the water supply off to the greenhouses as they could not afford to keep the plants alive.  The nectar source had suddenly been turned off and therefore their food stores were now very precious to them as it was mid-season and the colony numbers were big and still growing. 

Bad handling of your colony can upset them as well inappropriate use of smoke.  Bees are still wild animals and they have a naturally evolved defence mechanism that is there to ward off predators. If you go in all guns blazing with lots of smoke and noise and rough handling, you should not be surprised if you bees are less than happy to see you!

If you do have an aggressive colony there is always something that can be done.  I have heard beekeepers say they are so aggressive I have no option but to kill them.  You do have options and whilst killing them may be one of them, it should always be as a last resort.

If you are feel you are able to inspect the colony to locate the queen then do so. You will probably need to use more smoke than usual, which could be counterproductive as it may make the queen run more and she may end up being somewhere you’d least expect her to be. You can try using sugar water in a spray instead off smoke, as this will also stop the bees flying and they will hopefully be side-tracked by the sugar water too. If you inspect at the height of the day on a nice warm sunny day then most of the flying bees should be out and therefore you will have less bees in the colony to deal with.

If however, the colony is so evil that it makes it impossible to inspect, then you can try doing something to reduce the volume of bees you are dealing with. Again you should make sure it is a nice warm sunny day as you need the flying bees to be out flying.  The idea is that you move the hive several feet away from it’s existing location, place a queen-right nuc or small colony on the original location and you will find the flying bees, and these are more likely to be the ones that sting you, will return to original site and go into the new colony there.  It would be a good idea to cage the queen in this new colony to protected her from the returning bees, unless of course this queen was one you were going to replace anyway and then it won’t matter if they do overwhelm her.

If you move the hive in the morning then by early to mid-afternoon, depending on what time of the year it is, the vast majority of flying bees will have gone out foraging and will return to new colony you located on te original site. The activity at the entrance will be much less and there should be mainly young bees left in the colony. These younger bees will be far less aggressive and therefore will make it easier to inspect.  This will also mean there is a much better chance of them accepting the new queen too.  Now go through the colony, find the queen and kill her. Do not under any circumstances be tempted to keep her!

Put your new queen, still in her introduction cage with the tab on so it is sealed, into the colony and reassemble your hive. Leave the colony for 48 hours then go in and do an inspection and either remove the tab from the queen cage to let the bees let her out, or you can carefully open the cage and release her yourself.

If however, the colony is still too difficult for you to go through and you can’t find the queen, then you could try splitting the colony down. Take out some of the frames and bees to make up 2 or 3 smaller nucs which you can leave for a few hours and then go back and inspect and see if you can find the queen.  You may see from the behaviour of the bees which colony is likely to have the queen in. Once you have found the queen and killed her you can replace the combs back into one hive and add the new caged queen as described in the previous paragraphs.

If you did manage to find the old queen in the colony without splitting it down and reducing the bee numbers etc then do bear in mind that the bees may well overwhelm the new queen when you put her in. We have had a better acceptance rate by removing the old queen and leaving them for a few hours before putting the new queen cage in. I would suggest that at this stage you do spray the bees with sugar water before putting in the new queen and again leave the cage sealed for 48 hours so you can check she is still ok.

You may find the bees temperament improves just with the new queen heading the colony but in most cases you may need to wait until the new brood emerges that your new queen has laid to see a change in temperament.

If your bees do kill the queen and you try again only to find they kill her as well, the best thing would be to let them make a new queen using a frame of eggs from a colony that you do like the temperament from. Or you may have a queen cell that you can carefully take from another colony and see if they accept that.

Hopefully this will be of help to you, whatever your plan, remember to stay calm and focused, and do ask a friend to be there for reassurance and support if you can.