Where have all the queen cells gone ?

Where have all the queen cells gone ?
Long time passing
Where have all the queen cells gone ?
Long time ago
Where have all the queen cells gone ?
Gone to graveyards,
every one.
When will I ever learn ?
When will I ever learn ?


Of course that’s not really how the song goes, but it is the song I have been singing this week.

Yes it is true. For some still unknown reason, the beautiful queen cells which the bees had been raising, have been destroyed.

I conducted a hive inspection on June 18th with the intent of starting my mating nucs and transferring the queen cells into the mating nucs. I found that all the queen cells had been either destroyed, or the larva was dead in the uncapped cells. What happened? An inspection this week should tell. I expect it could have been one of four things.
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The Miller frame, full of queen cells (13) on June 16th. On June 18th the cells were dead.
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First: The cold nights combined with the screened bottom board could have chilled the queen cells and caused the queen larva to die.

There were two unseasonably cold nights a week and a half ago. Temperatures dropped into the low 40’s which could have chilled the larva. Since this is a miller frame and it was not fully drawn out there were not as many bees on the frame as on the others. However, the miller frame was in the middle of a very strong hive. The bees should have been able to keep them warm.

Second: My math could have been wrong.

Perhaps one or more queens were raised from larva that was older than I thought, allowing a virgin queen to emerge and destroy the other cells before the expected emergence date. Lets see. The miller frame with eggs was taken from the mother hive and installed in the cell building hive on June 8th. If the eggs (assumed 3 days old ) were installed in the cell builder on the 8th then the queens would be emerging 13 days later (16 – 3) on June 21st. No the math is ok. An inspection on the 18th should have shown capped queen cells. There was at least a 2 day buffer before the queens should have emerged.


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This photo from June 16th appears to show a dammaged queen cell. Are the workers building or tearing down?
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Third: I could have missed one of the queen cells raised by the bees from an older larva.

As soon as a virgin queen emerges she hunts down competing queen cells and destroys them. If the bees started raising a queen from larva when the cell builder hive was started on June 8th the bees could have started a queen from larva that was 6 days old (unlikely). That would put queen emergence on the 18th, the same day as my inspection.


Fourth: A queen cell was transferred into the Cell builder when it was created on June 8th.

This seams to be the most likely explanation. A started queen cell (which would have been very small) was inadvertently installed into the cell builder hive when it was assembled. Although the hive was inspected for erroneous queen cells which were destroyed, if one was missed it would have emerged before the 18th, giving the virgin queen time to destroy the cells.

If a queen is found in the cell builder this weekend it will resolve the mystery.

The lesson I’ve learned through this is that it is very important to know how old the larva is when starting a queen cell. The miller method allows queens to be started which could be 3 or 4 days in age apart. When the miller frame is installed in the hive it probably has eggs and larva. The bees can select any age larva to start queen cells from. This means that the queens raised from this larva will emerge at various times, and the queen cells will be in various stages of development throughout the queen rearing procedure. It seams that grafting larva the same age into queen cups would insure that the queens being raised are all within one day of each other in age. If the weather permits I will attempt to graft cells this weekend and continue this experiment.
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Left: My first virgin queen. This queen was raised by moving a frame of eggs and larva along with two frames of bees into a nuc. The bees raised their own queen. She emerged from her sell just prior to the inspection on June 16th.
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On a positive note. There was one cell which seamed to be intact. It was installed in a queenless mating nuc. We will see if the queen emerges this weekend as well.

The queen cell started on the 1st of the month and installed in a nuc had emerged. The virgin queen was seen walking around on the comb. If she has mated she will be laying eggs this coming week.