This is the third subject I taught at the Mount Vernon Nazarene University, in 2024 to see the other subjects I’ve taught click a link here: Hive Parts, Hive Placement)
Simply,
–Swarm cells are a sign of a good happy queen because this means the bees are growing. A key word here is that the swarm cell is Preparation.
-Supersedure cells mean you have either no queen or a defective queen. A key word here is that the supersedure cell is a Surprise Reaction or Unexpected.
Swarm cell:
The Swarm cell starts out as a queen cup that the bees always make at the bottom of a frame because this is planned. A swarm cell is just a queen cup with an egg in it, if you have a queen cup without an egg in it that means that the bees probably aren’t going to swarm. If the bees are going to swarm the queen will then lay an egg in the cup which the nurse bees will feed royal jelly so that the egg grows into a new queen. With a swarm cell the outcome is two queens total, one laying queen to leave and build a new colony and one virgin queen to stay with the old colony and eventually mate.
What to do with a swarm cell: I would recommend that you don’t scrape it off, if the bees get it in their mind that they will swarm, they will swarm even if you destroy the cell.
You can also prepare for your bees to swarm. This might mean getting more equipment to house your new hive or this might mean keeping a closer eye on your hives, you don’t want to miss when your bees swarm.
Supersedure cell:
A supersedure cell is when something badly unexpected happens to the queen. There are three main reasons that you can have a supersedure cell,
1-The queen gets squished,
2-If she only lays Drone Brood, or
3-If she is old and starts to not lay eggs.
To make a supersedure cell the bees will take an existing worker cell with an egg in it and start to slope it downward like a swarm cell. They will also feed the egg royal jelly to make it a queen.
A supersedure cell will be anywhere on the foundation of the frame because this is unplanned. The outcome of this is one queen.
What to do with a supersedure cell: Look to see if you can figure out why the bees have built the supersedure cell. It is good to know why the bees are doing this, an example of wanting to know this is if the queen is only laying drone eggs you will want to stop this by squishing the queen. If you don’t dispose of the drone-laying queen then the hive will struggle because they will have too many drones to feed. I lost a hive to this last year.
These cells have sixteen days total between egg and hatched queen, eight days when the cell is uncapped and eight days that the cell is capped. You won’t want to open the hive to inspect it during the eight days that the queen cell is capped because if you do you might rip it open thus killing the queen developing inside. If you kill the queen you will either cost yourself money in buying a new queen or you will cost yourself a lot of time.
Conclusion:
Swarm cells are a sign of a good happy queen because this means the bees are growing. This is a Planned process,
Supersedure cells mean you have either no queen or a defective queen. This is Unexpected or a Surprise.
Again don’t open the hive during the eight days that the queen cells are capped so that you don’t rip them open. It is helpful to have a chart of when the queen cells will be capped and when they will hatch.