Supercedure question

[Curtchann]

I recently discovered that one of my hives has superceded it's queen. The queen is out as I found the bottom of the queen cell opened and hinged. The cap fell back into place while taking the picture.



I also found 2 queen cups on the bottom of two seperate frames. They appeared to have a white milky substance or larvae in them. They were not capped. (Picture 2 is one of them)



My question is, will a hive swarm when they have just replaced their queen? I don't believe she has taken her mating flight yet.

[apisbees]

Lack of queen pheromones in the hive is telling the bees that they haven't a viable queen in the hive but they will most likely get torn down by the new queen untill she has mated and the worker quite protecting them.

[riverbee]

curt, a hive is typically not going to swarm with a new queen, but may abscond if they are not happy, for various reasons.

the two queen cups on the bottom, hard to tell from the pic, but the cups may be filled with royal jelly, and maybe larvae.

[tecumseh]

part of this is simply a matter of definition.  if the hive is in fact in the process of supersceding the queen then there is by definition no swarm that will issue from the hive.  also in the case of superscedure you may still have the old queen on board while the new queen is also in the box < most all cases of multiple queens spotted in the same box falls under this definition.  the other two reason why queen cells are constructed....  emergency cells (for example the queen dies in the process of manipulation or old age) and swarm cells (it is only in this last case where the hives will by definition swarm).