What are Play Cups - What Do Play Cups Look Like - Play Cups Versus Swarm Cells

Have you got play cups in your colony and you're worried your bees are going to swarm? In this video, I'm going to show you what play cups are and why you needn't worry about them. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. In this video, I'm going to show you a few pictures of play cups. I'm going to talk to you about what play cups are, why bees produce them, and why you really shouldn't be worried about them in your colony. So play cups will appear all throughout the beekeeping season. In fact, I have plenty of colonies even in the middle of winter where there's play cups because the bees don't necessarily take them down. So if you have a colony for a few years, you'll probably see play cups just all over your frames anyway. But coming up to the swarming season, bees produce play cups All over the frames, and they do this in preparation for swarming. Now, don't confuse that with the bees preparing to swarm. They're 2 very, very different things, and that's why I want to do this video, because I've had a lot of people message me for nucs that I've sold them saying, my bees are swarming, they're trying to swarm. And I always say, okay, send me some pictures, let's have a look at what's going on. And very, very often I get pictures of play cups are sent back. So I just wanted to do this video just to show you the difference between a play cup and a charged swarm cell, and to avoid any confusion on this matter as well. A charged swarm cell is a swarm cell that the bees are starting to draw down, is still open, has a visible larva inside, and has a pool of royal jelly inside. Need to get the terms right here. That is what a charged swarm cell is. If you're seeing charged swarm cells in your colony, the bees are trying to swarm. If you see play cups in your colony, that doesn't mean your bees are trying to swarm, and that is just a normal thing to see. Obviously, if you see it, take a look inside it and see what's inside it. If there's nothing inside it whatsoever, the bees aren't trying to swarm. If there is an egg in a play cup, that doesn't necessarily mean the bees are trying to swarm. But it's definitely one to monitor. As soon as they start putting eggs in play cups, the colony has got everything they need to start feeding those larvae, once they've broken out of the eggs, into queens. And they do that through feeding them royal jelly to turn them into charged queen cells, into capped queen cells, into virgin queens. However, when I see an egg in a play cup, I don't take any action. I put that hive to be monitored next week to check to see if they started to draw out those cells, Turn them into charged queen cells. So I'm going to put my bee suit on now, I'm going to crack open a couple of colonies. Every single colony in this apiary will have play cups in it now, it's the middle of May. Just going to show you what a play cup looks like, and then I'll flash up a couple of old pictures of some charged swarm cells and some capped swarm cells as well, just to show you the difference. Because one you need to take an action on, and the play cups you really don't need to do anything about. Right, so we're going to take a look inside this colony here. We're going to see if we can find some play cups.

So we've got a nice strong colony here covering all of those 10 frames, really big strong colony of bees. This is the kind of strength that you're going to see your colonies mid to late May, and this is when you're going to see play cups coming up. Like I said, you can see them all year round, very, very likely to find some play cups in here though.

Right, so I found a play cup center of the frame. It's so easy to confuse this for the fact that your bees are swarming, but I'm going to give you a real nice close-up on it now and explain why there's nothing to worry about.

So there's the play cup right in the middle, and the bees will use that play cup there to create a swarm cell. The queen will lay an egg in it, and the colony as a whole will decide we want to swarm. But in its current state, there is nothing to worry about. You can see that the cell hasn't been extended downwards, so there's no movement downwards. And then if you look inside, which is really difficult to do on camera, but you're expecting to see nothing. And that's the big thing that you're looking for here. You want to be able to see nothing in the cell. If there's nothing in the cell and they haven't drawn it down and it looks like that, it is a play cup and there is nothing to worry about. There's another angle of it for you there. You can see they've built it out of a normal cell and they've worked it round at about 90 degrees, so the swarm cell will run parallel to the frame and perpendicular to the way that the brood would normally emerge. But like I say, if they're not drawing it down and there's nothing in it, it's just a play cup and there's nothing to worry about.

So here's a really good frame to show you some play cups because there's about 7 or 8 different play cups on it. So I'll go across the frame now, show you some different examples of play cups on this frame.

So here's another couple of play cups there. We've actually got 3. So we've got 1 up there and then 2 down there. So you've got 3 play cups in a row. Again, it might look like they're trying to swarm, but they're really not. That is just perfectly normal. If you're seeing that in your colonies, you've got nothing to worry about. And there you go, there's another couple of play cups there. And I do appreciate if you see these on your colonies, it is really, really tempting to think that they are swarm cells, and they're not. And the giveaway is— very difficult to do it on camera— but the fact that there is nothing in them. There's no eggs, there's no larva, there's nothing. It's just wax ready to accept an egg that is potentially going to be turned into a swarm cell. It's just preparations. The colony isn't trying to swarm.

So there you go, there's a few play cups for you to see. Look in your colonies.

You will find play cups almost certainly.

Don't let the bees deceive you, and don't let them think that they are swarming because if you're just seeing play cups with nothing inside them, they're not swarming. What I'll do at this point in the video is I'll flash up a charged queen cell. That is what a charged queen cell looks like. You can see the way they've drawn down from that play cup, and they started to build a swarm cell.

A charged swarm cell.

Swarm cell means it's open and it means there's a larva inside it and it means that there's royal jelly visible inside it. If you see that, the colony is trying to swarm and they will swarm within a few days, so you need to take action. If you go into your colony and you find capped queen cells, chances are the colony has already swarmed, but if there's still eggs in the colony, if the weather's been bad, you might still find the queen. So have a look around, you might just be able to save it. So there you go, that's it for the video. Just a really, really quick one today. I just wanted to show you the difference between what play cups are and what open charge swarm cells are and what capped swarm cells are. The 2 latter ones there, you need to do some sort of artificial swarm on them to stop them swarming. And the play cups, there's no action required. So I hope you found that video useful. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.

Bye.