Hidden Queen Cells

[NigelP]

It can often be tricky to find every single queen cell in a hive as they can hide them away in the most unlikely places. I think this one deserves an award.
Would you have spotted an opened queen cell on the photo below?
Not the queen cups but an opened queen cell.
I know I missed it when reducing queen cells in this hive.


Knowing there is an open queen cell on the frame there is only one place it can be.
This shows the other side of the same frame.
Again easy to miss where it is as it looks nothing like a queen cell just part of the frame.




Now it's obvious.....the little devils.

[Steve 1972]

I had the odd onel like that last year but this year I had quite a lot of them..that is why I have lost two swarms headed by virgins.

[AdamD]

Yup, very easy to miss. Again 'the books' say go back after 5 or 6 days and remove all emergency and unwanted cells. It doesn't always work like that and another go at checking is adviseable - if I go in again to check for 'extra' queencells, I often find some. (And I know I have missed them too).

Here's a small emergency cell I found earlier this year.



Nigel, have you seen them on the outside of a frame of stores, (single queencell) well away from the remaining brood?

[NigelP]

Occasionally on stores. They seem to secrete them in very strange places at times.
That brood frame I showed was actually full of honey that I removed to extract.
I'm a big fan of snelgrove method 2 as the bees find and destroy all the queen cells for you....it's just those in the bottom box you need to seek out.
I'm hoping that by leaving for two weeks and then re-uniting queen right box with the queenless hlaf thsat the bees will do the same for any I've missed....I hope...

[AndrewLD]

Do you think these efforts to hide their queen cells are an adaption to years of being kept by humans in beehives?
Starting to wonder just which of the two of us is the intelligent species

[Murox]

Nope.....(a) we don't know how to look properly.
(b) men don't ever look properly.(I have her permission to say that)
(c) they were never hidden in the first place, so either (a) or (b) apply.