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Well now, that was a close one

So, me being the curious person I am, I decided to have a little look-in today, just to see if my beek mentor's advice was good or not. The short answer: yes. The long answer: yes. The reason I say that,  is because I saw some things I wasnt really expecting, and it took me a while to diagnose the situation. Today, I actually didn't panic, maybe that is because I just finished reading 'The Martian' and I was wondering, what would Mark Watney do. Anyway, I stopped to think about what I was seeing. The below photo shows a queen cell I found in Chewbacca's hive.

A queen cell (swarm cell) on the lower right side of the frame.
Copyright Jason Hotham 2016
I have to admit, at first sight, I thought, "wow, that will be one helluva queen!" But, having said that, I really don't want my bees to swarm. Naturally, I broke out the cell (after of course finding evidence of the queen) and continued with my inspection. A few frames later, I found another queen cell, not nearly as big, but it was a queen cell nonetheless. As I finished my inspection I began wondering what I was to do with this colony. They MUST be wanting to swarm, or maybe not?

So, now I began to think. Not panic, but think. On Sunday, which is three days ago, I cut out the drone frame, because my mentor told me, that if the bees want to swarm, they will not attempt to draw out any comb on the drone frame. Well, they were drawing out comb on the drone frame, so why did I find two swarm cells if they didn't want to swarm. Well, then it dawned on me. A queen needs 16 days from the day an egg has been laid until the day she emerges from her cell. By looking at the size of the queen cell I supposed that it was at least 5 days old. That would mean that an egg had been laid in the cell probably on or around Friday. Since that is probably the case, then it was probably just two queen cells that I missed in my last inspection, before I cut out the drone frame.

So, it was a close call and I was a little bit confused, but I think I got things figured out now. I think my mentor was right, and the bees don't necessarily plan on swarming. More evidence to support this: They are drawing out much more comb in the honey super. In other words, they are building. Bees who plan to swarm, do not build. Sigh!

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