Supersedure or swarm cells?

[Shawn]

Opened the hive todya to look for what was causing a smell. I pulled some frames out and found they were not working the frame very nicely. I them saw an odd shape cell  . I pulled another frame and the same thing. At first I thought supersedure and then I thought swarm. Why? Some cells are at the end of the comb, not the frame and some are right in the middle of the frame. The one frame I got some pictures of you can see at least three cells, I dont think they have any eggs in them yet.

Thinking they are swarm and the fact that they still have not touched 5 frames in their second year I replaced the empty frames with new one that were sprayed with sugar water. I moved frame one spot over and put the new frames in. The bees went onto the empty frames almost immediately.

[asprince]

Looks like emergency queen cups to me. It is not uncommon to see these in hives. I would scrape those "rows" out and tell them to build it correct next time.

Steve

[Shawn]

Thanks Steve. I forgot to say that I did see lots of your larvae in the frames but I didnt see any eggs that I remember. There were lots of capped worker brood so I know she has not been gone for long, if in deed she is gone.

[Shawn]

Another question. When I pulled up the frame I saw some larvae laying on the top of the bottom frames. Could it be possible the larvae fell out of the queen cups? Maybe I jolted it too hard.

[asprince]

Sometimes drone comb cells are built on the bottom of frames and get attached to other hive parts.( ither frames, bottom board) When the frames are removed for inspection, these outside drone cells get torn open exposing the larva. This is normal.

Steve 

[Shawn]

Ok I checked on them today and found the same cell above was gone  . Not sure where it went but it was gone. I checked all the frames in both deeps. I saw tons of capped worker cells, some drone, but no eggs. I looked and looked and did not see any eggs. Could it be a new queen had hatched, killed the old queen, and has not started laying yet?

[Cindi]

Shawn, no doubt that the larvae were jolted out of the cell.  When one is handling frames with open brood, you must be very careful.  Those larvae and get dislodged from the cell quite easily, especially if one is shaking the bees off the frame, very,very gentle with open brood frames.  The bees will build queen cups and tear them down too.  It is practice it is believed, smiling.  Nice pictures.  When the bees build crazyish comb, scrape it off and have them rebuild it.  Crazy comb can really be a nuisance.  Have that great and most wonderful day, health.  Cindi

[Shawn]

Ok so I thought they had tore down everything but I opened it today and here is what I found.







The two deeps have a combined 4 to 5 frames of capped brood but they still refuse to build on certain frames. I would have thought they would have swarmed by now beause they wont use all the frames. Any suggestions?