Last night I took my photo of the queen cells to the Leeds Beekeeping Association night and asked for advice. Robin Tomlinson, who has around 50 hives and has been keeping bees for 30 years or so, took one look at them and said they were supersedure cells built by the bees to replace a dead or failing queen and that I should leave the hive alone for three weeks. He then complicated things by looking at another photo and saying I had an emergency queen cell where the bees try to take an existing worker bee cell and turn it into a queen. He said I should go in and destroy any cells like this as they don't make good queens. Then the beekeepers in general started looking at my photos and trying to assess the health of the colony from the appearance of the sealed brood cells in the photo, whether they were drone cells or slightly raised worker cells which were deformed slightly due to the presence of either chalk brood or chilled brood.
So I am taking Robin's advice and leaving them to get on with whatever they are doing. Much as I would like to go in for another look, and check how many queen cells were actually there and if there are any signs of disease, this isn't strictly necessary and I don't really have the time. My best hope is that they do a swift and efficient supersedure and that the new queen is stronger than the old one as this hive has never really thrived.
Just in case they do swarm, I have filled a nucleus box with empty frames of foundation and left it temptingly nearby.
On the soap front, both the printer and the labels arrived safely yesterday so I have much to get on with.
Good luck with it all, Helen. Hope the soap does well. xx
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