Question about queen cells in upper box.

[Yankee11]

I have a single deep with a medium of honey on top. The queen has been laying in the medium and I found her in the deep. I added a queen excluder to keep down there until the brood hatched out of the top.

The drew 2 queen cells. I checked yesterday and 1 of them was opened at the bottom. other one still capped. I could not find the queen. Went back today and the other cell was open at the bottom. I can not find a queen.

Question,

Would they kill the new queens when they hatch out, since they are only separated by an excluder?

[Jen]

Good Question Yankee!

[pistolpete]

A queen excluder may not work on a virgin queen.  They are slim enough to pass through it.  My guess is that your queen got squished during your last inspection and now you have a virgin one in there in the process of making her mating flights.  Hopefully there are mature drones around.

[Jen]

Pistol- I may be facing that same problem, mature drones. It's early in the year and my hive swarmed 3-4 days ago, there are two queen cells in the mother hive, and plenty of drones, I just hope they are mature enough for the mating flight.

[Yankee11]

Pistol,

I saw tiny larva and eggs in the deep yesterday. It has been about 8 or 9 days since I did the inspection and put the queen excluder on.

Now, you may be on to something with the queen being small. If they went down through the excluder into the bottom box then they
were killed for sure.

I should have cut that capped queen cell out yesterday when I saw it. But I didn't put excluder on to get queen cells so i left it to see what would happen. May have learned something by doing so. 

[Yankee11]

How old for drones to be able to mate.  15 days old?

[tecumseh]

a snip...
A queen excluder may not work on a virgin queen.  They are slim enough to pass through it.

tecumseh...
well in most case NO.  that is, you can have a puny virgin queen that can pass thru an excluder but the great majority cannot.  basically what has happened here is the brood in the top box got removed from the queens pheromone footprint and the bees in the top of the box produced a couple of queen cells.  This is NOT superscedure and I am guessing you still have a queen below the excluder. If you rear queens in the traditional commercial way with starters and finishers you see this quite frequently in the finisher (which are set up in pretty much the same fashion as you describe).     

[apisbees]

provide the shallow super with a upper entrance out the back of the hive if you want the upper queen to mate other than that stay out of the hive for 2 weeks then check to se what has happened and where you have mated queens. 

[Yankee11]

Yes there is a mated queen in the bottom box. I have a inner cover on with exit on it, so she can get out.

When you are running the finishing boxes with the queen in bottom box and qcells in the top. The qcells usually get pulled or caged before they hatch. I just wasn't sure what would happen if one hatched. I know that hatched queen would kill the others. I am wondering if the bees in the bottom box would come up through the excluder and kill the new queen. There is not a honey super or any space separating them. If they didn't kill the virgin queen, I would think they would surely do it when she gets mated.

I did add a 2nd deep before the the second qc hatched. So now there is at least space between the 2 boxes.


I am gonna leave it as is and see what happens. I have a feeling there's a queen in that top super, I just couldn't see her.

[blueblood]

I was thinking what Tec explained.  That happened to me...once..... ha!  Personally, I will not be putting honey supers on without an excluder anymore.  Every test I did with that ended with messy supers with brood.  That queen is most likely in there.  They are sneaky, sneaky and sneaky.

[brooksbeefarm]

Why not put the top super on a bottom board next to the mother hive facing opposite direction to see what happens. If there is a queen in the bottom and top with only a queen excluder between them the queens can  fight and either kill or injure the other. Jack

[Yankee11]

I'm with ya Blue. But this was a late hive I started with  queen cell last summer. They built up a single deep and I sat the medium of Honey
on them to over winter. With the way this weather has been I was afraid to put the excluder on to early, afraid they may leave the queen  under excluder.

It will work out, this is just kind of little fun experiment.

I think I am not understanding the way the queens pheromone is spread. I don't understand why they pulled the 2 qcells just because
I added the excluder. I could see it if I had added a box in between or smashed the laying queen.

This is why I love beekeeping, always something to exercise the ole brain muscle.

[Yankee11]

I actually carried a bottom board down there with me but didn't do it yesterday. I might do it today though.

[blueblood]

Ah, gotcha.  Ya know, the more I think I know or understand about these little creatures, the more I realize I don't know and have tons more questions.  I suppose that is what makes this an interesting craft.

[Jen]

Go to Raising Queens on the main page Beekeeping 101, lots of info there on cells, cups, nsuch

[tecumseh]

a snip..
When you are running the finishing boxes with the queen in bottom box and qcells in the top. The qcells usually get pulled or caged before they hatch. I just wasn't sure what would happen if one hatched. I know that hatched queen would kill the others. I am wondering if the bees in the bottom box would come up through the excluder and kill the new queen. There is not a honey super or any space separating them. If they didn't kill the virgin queen, I would think they would surely do it when she gets mated.

tecumseh...
as to your first two sentence yes that is the plan, but sometime things don't work out exactly to plan.  even a slight head start in properly setting up a finisher can mean that any wild queen cell produced in the upper box will likely emerge before the queen cells on the cell bar hatch.  there is no reason to suspect the worker would kill the virgin or for that matter a newly mated queen.  of course to get that queen from a wild cell mated she will need to exit the hive via an entrance in the top box.  I personally would turn this entrance to the opposite side of the box from the existing lower entrance < queens and most especially virgin queens can regularly have 'blonde days' and with a entrance in the back the virgin once she flies to mate is less likely to return and walk in the bottom entrance.