Supersedure Queen Cells - Beekeeping 101- GardenFork

[@rods9421]

Hi there, just to note supersedure and swarm cells are sometimes called the same thing. The important thing to understand is a true "Supersedure" cell is always present with the queen in the hive, and often after the new queen hatches mother and daughter can be seen for a period working side by side. Thanks for the great video.

[@gardenfork]

i have 5 hives in the yard, so mating was not a problem. ( it did take a week for the hatched virgin queen to mate properly ) raising a queen this way does take a month, but its real easy and now i always have a backup queen at the ready when stuff like this happens

[@kokohawk]

I've never watched any of you bee keeping videos or ever wanted to. I watched this one though and thought it was quite interesting. I might have to watch some of them from here now. Thanks.

[@gardenfork]

see Russ, you learn every time you watch gardenfork! ;)

[@gardenfork]

cool. most of the bee videos are longer, but now i'm thinking i should make more short ones for you all who are not bee hobbyists. thanks, eric.

[@gardenfork]

yeah, the terminology gets confusing, depends on which expert or book you are reading. this hive was queenless, no eggs in the comb, few covered brood. i pulled out the frames with the queen cells and put them in a nuc with some workers and honey. i then combined this hive with a small hive that I use to raise queens. so now i have a queenright hive and another small nuc for queen raising. thanks, eric.

[@TomBrueggen]

Eric, did you induce the queenless scenario, or did she just die/disappear? I moved my queen to induce emergency queens, and got my bees to pull ~24 queen cells. However, by location on the combs, I was told they were supersedure cells. From my witness, emergency cells tend to be pulled wherever a good egg is located. Supersedure cells tend to be protected in the middle of comb, selected optimally for best chance of success. I would call yours "swarm cells. Remove all but 2-3, or they may swarm.

[@TomBrueggen]

Well played. I'm looking at starting to raise queens as well. I'm thinking on making a queenless split into a 5 frame nuc, and letting them draw queen cells, then harvesting/relocating those cells to other mating nucs. This is in effect how I went from one package of bees in April to 4 TBH's by July. It works well, but you sacrifice time while the bees raise a new queen. So I'll dedicate one hive to it. I'm just not ready to do grafting for large scale queen production yet.

[@TomBrueggen]

I also like the idea of having a queen castle for storing mated queens. I've taken up doing hive removals, and would like to have mated queens always available in case I come across an aggressive group of bees. Recently I inherited a hive (made a video), and they show aggression towards the lawnmower. But in general, it would be good to have extra queens always available. When removed from a nuc, the remaining queenless bees would just be combined to another hive, or left to raise another queen.

[@gardenfork]

i bought 4 queens last year, but i have to drive 1.5 hours to get them, and i'm reluctant to have them shipped, not being home during the day to receive them. so this year i pulled a frame of new eggs from my heatlhiest, calmest hive, put it in a medium super with some honey frames, and raised a queen. more>

[@gardenfork]

hi joe, that happens when a hive has what is called a Laying Worker. if the queen is missing, the reproductive organs of some worker bees may develop, and they start laying eggs, but because they worker bees are not mated - unfertilized - they only can lay drone (male) eggs. i've had this happen in a hive, not fun.

[@Dobbydog-eo2ef]

Thanks this was really helpful

[@Wixxos]

- looks more like swarm cells to me too - I think you should distinguish between supersedure and emergency, even though the cells might be the same

[@russtex]

That's very interesting! I didn't know they did that!

[@TomBrueggen]

Very true. Seems the beekeeping industry is plagued with misuse of terminology. In a beekeeping class I attended (and now teach) the teacher mentioned the difference between supersedure and swarm cells being only the placement on the comb. I corrected him that I had witnessed the exact opposite in my hives. Definition is everything. When people ask if I get "bit" by my bees, it sends chills down my spine. I also correct people on "swarming" which is not when a dozen bees fly around your head...

[@ultratec66]

Very cool! TFS!

[@theperfectbotsteve4916]

ok but dose the new queen in this situation mate with a drone from another colony and if so how do they just fly off and come back or do they pull a hagsberg and mate with a drone from there own colony

[@gardenfork]

i may be guilty of not using the proper terminology, i get different answers depending on which book/blog i check this with. btw, my favorite beekeeping blog is HoneyBeeSuite-dot-com well written. eric.

[@josephcperry]

Oh. Ok. Thanks Eric.

[@karinjohnson839]

Is it an optical illusion, or am I seeing what looks like 3 eggs in each cell? :29. Maybe this was a result of a dying queen?

[@josephcperry]

Hmm I thought those kind of queens could only produce drones?

[@TomBoomsheeva]

Swarm Cells