Liz and Todd prepare Q4 for the next step: supersedure impulse


This tuesday, while I was away, Liz and Todd removed the cloak board slider from Q4, effectively reunited the upper box of bees with the pheromones of the queen. They also took this picture of the queen cells:

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The artificial royal jelly was completely rejected by the bees, but the really like all off Liz’s larva and halve of mine. By removing the slider, we hope that they will continue to feed these cells well and make them into large queen cells. They started to look really good already with what appears to be a good supply of food. What is different about the supersedure impulse if you compare that with our other rounds of queen rearing: the nurse hive stays queen right. We could take all the queen cells out this sunday and introduce another batch in a few days. Most likely, if there are queen cells left on sunday, I will make some nucs from the hive regardless, but the losses are less than by first creating a very full queen less hive.

 

Who else wants a queen cell? The lineage is from Mel, related to Cleopatra. Very dark queen, good brood pattern. I don’t know from Mell if this hive resulted in a box of honey, but it sure wintered well. The bees are calm.

 


2 thoughts on “Liz and Todd prepare Q4 for the next step: supersedure impulse

  • todd

    Does this mean that you are expecting the bees to supersede the existing queen? Will they kill or kick out the current queen just before the new queens emerge? Or might the current queen now try to kill all the new queens before they emerge? Or might the workers pick up the queen scent and abandon the new cells?

    • Kristien Z Post author

      There is a queen excluder between the two boxes, so the old queen cannot get to the cells. We will remove the cells before they hatch, because, indeed, the virgins good get through the excluder and go after the mother queen.
      I also believe that the mother does not have a sense of removing queen cells. This would be the job of the bees, but they are the ones that build the cells, so I hope that they go with the plan and keep nurturing the cells.

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