Laurence Edwards inspects his hive and finds the bees building supersedure cells to replace their queen Splodge, then destroying them. The colony has recovered to 6-7 frames of brood and shows no signs of disease, yet keeps trying to overthrow a seemingly healthy queen. Edwards removes the latest cell and hopes Splodge survives winter.
Let's check up on Splodge and see if she's been superseded yet. So last time we thought we'd lost Splodge. We had a nice fat superseder cell. We went in to see if Splodge was there. No sign of the superseder cell queen, but we did find Splodge. We also found another superseder cell. So we're gonna go back in today, see if we can find that new superseder queen. But more importantly, we're gonna see if we can find Splodge in here again. Last time I thought there's no chance that Splodge is gonna be here. This time I'm crossing my fingers we find splodge very early on. Let's get inside, see how she's getting on. So colony's looking pretty decent. Have to remember with this one here that they were knocked right back because of that drone-laying queen, but they're probably covering 7 frames, maybe 6.5, 7 frames of bees in there. Not as strong as a lot of the other colonies in this apiary. You can see the 3 frames over there to the left, pretty much empty, but still plenty of time for the colonies to expand. Once all of that brood that is hopefully in there begins to emerge. We're into the first week of September now, so the brood is slowing down, but you'll still get to see quite a big increase as all that brood emerges. So that was the third frame from the end, the one that looked like there wasn't a huge amount going on, and there's not really, but there's a bit of stores on there. Still plenty of space for the queen to lay. Splodge is going to be busy, and then hopefully the rest of the frames we should see a little bit of action, whether it's stores or pollen. Well, there we go, straight into a little bit of brood, which is good to see. So just a bit of brood on that frame, no eggs, which is normal, I guess, for this time of the year. You'll notice I've got my Apivar strips in here as well. I've set them up for a full brood box, so 2 strips, but you could probably get away with one. So that's good to see there. We've got a nice big frame of brood, eggs as well, larvae, lots of nice young bees in there as well. No sign of any deformed wing virus, decent amount of stores, not a lot, but just enough. Not like the colony a couple of places down that's completely starved out. Again, plenty of eggs there. No sign of any queen yet, but nice to see on every single frame so far, plenty of brood. Still got drones in there. Interesting, they've taken the supersedure cell down again. How interesting is that? I wonder why they're superseding when they want to take them down. And that one there has definitely not emerged. You can see they've chewed it down from the side. So almost certainly splodge is going to be in here. Very, very curious behavior, this. And what's also interesting is every single time I've gone to find Splodge, she's been right over in this corner. And once again, like on demand, she is there. But she's clearly kind of going all over the hive because there's brood everywhere, unless there is a supercedure queen in here that I'm not seeing each time. But I don't think I am. That is just Splodge doing her business, laying up those frames. And you honestly couldn't Make up what's going on in here. They are trying to supersede again. Another superseder cell. So I'm convinced at this point there's nothing wrong with splodge. Absolutely nothing wrong with her. So I'm just going to open up that cell. They are trying to supersede her again. Another classic superseder cell, as in it's a single cell in the colony towards the edge of the brood nest. Don't let people tell you superseder cells are only in the middle, or they never appear at the top, or they never appear at the bottom. All about the location within the brood nest and the number of cells. That there, definite supersedure cell, but this time I'm going to show you first and then I'm going to take it down. Before I do that, I'm just going to pick up Spodge. Spodge can just go back in there, don't want her on this frame. So there we go, another supersedure cell. That is 3 supersedure cells in total now that this colony has produced, and every single time they have taken it down. Really, really strange behavior. I've never ever seen it before where a colony is insistent on superseding a queen. But then kind of sabotages its own cells. Normally what happens is they try and supersede, and I tell them, "No, no, no, that queen's good. I'll take down your cells." And then after a few rounds, they stop superseding, or they actually go through with the superseder, and you end up with two queens, and then they pick the best one. But I've never ever seen that. If you've seen that, let me know in the comments how it ended up. A queen that is clearly okay, that has a superficial defect. That means that the queens try and supersede her, which means that the bees try and supersede her, but they never ever go through with it, and a new queen never emerges. Very, very interesting and something I've never seen before. That is the beauty of beekeeping. You are learning something new every single day. I'm going to take down this supersedure cell today because it's too late in the year. I'm confident of Sploge's ability to get that colony through the winter. However, they're very likely just to go ahead and produce another supersedure cell. The colony's not booming, the colony's not thriving. I'm not opening it up and saying, well, that's a 10 out of 10. I'm looking at it from the size and taking into account the fact that it was a drone layer and it had massively shrunk down. But I'm looking at it and thinking that's probably a 6, 6.5, maybe something like that. So it's not a perfect colony. But then if there is a defect, why aren't the bees going through with the supersedure? It's like some bees in there deem her to be defective and start a supersedure cell, and then some other bees come along and say, no, no, no, no, no, she's absolutely fine with taking down that cell. That's happened 3 times now. Very, very interesting. So that's probably going to be the last video I do of Sploge this year. Definitely hit the subscribe button though if you're interested in finding out what happens to Sploge and if she makes it through the winter.
