When making splits, skip elongated swarm cells with fallen larvae. The presenter opens one to show a larva that slipped out of its royal jelly, making it a dud that won't develop into a mated queen. Pick regular-sized capped cells with healthy larvae positioned head-down instead.
In this video, I'm going to show you why you should never choose a super elongated swarm cell. So take a look at this cell here. If I just move the bees away from it now, you might think there that that swarm cell looks like a really good super long swarm cell. Bees won't even give me a chance to film it. There you go, super long swarm cell. You might be thinking bigger is better. Definitely not. This swarm cell here, far, far better. It's a regular size. Fully capped over, but not elongated and not extended. So if I take my hive tool on this one here and start opening it up, you will see quite clearly. Look, we've got a larva sitting at the bottom of the cell. This is the top. This is the bottom. In a healthy swarm cell, the larva should be sitting up here, and then she will grow, and her head will end up at the bottom down here. What's happened is that the larva has Fallen out of its pool of royal jelly and the bees extend it down as far as they can. Sometimes you see these and they're kind of as long as your finger, but without a doubt, never ever choose a capped swarm cell that's super elongated like that one there. Means that the larva's fallen, means that it's a dud, means that you're not going to get a mated queen. Now this colony here is swarming, so there's lots of cells in here. So I'm just going to take the opportunity just to open this one up here and I'll show you what a healthy one should look like. And there we go, doesn't get much healthier than that. That is a virgin queen ready to emerge within the next couple of hours. You can see her moving around in there. The larva would have been on the left-hand side and her head is down to the right-hand side, whereas that one there would have been created at the same time. You can see the difference in maturity, doesn't form properly because it's dropped away from the royal jelly. That one won't ever fly. This one here is minutes away.
