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I am a beginner beekeeper. My package bees and the queen were installed Mar.30, 2012. Four days later when I checked the hive the queen was released and everything looked good. During inspection yesterday everything was beautiful and the queen was laying eggs. However, the worker's have several supercedure cells throughout the hive. I have had two suggestions from very experienced beekeepers. The first is leave them alone and check back in 3 wks. The other person suggests strongly that I destroy the queen cells and that after the original queen's brood develops in 2-3 wks everyone will be happy and they will accept this queen (this person actually raises queens and runs into this all of the time and says it is natural for the workers to make new queens because of course the current queen is not one of them) After reading again in First Lessons of Beekeeping I am leaning toward the second opinion. I have noticed throughout the learning process that I get a lot of conflicting advice and it is somewhat confusing. Which way would you go?

Welcome to the forum. Please put your location in your profile. You are welcome to post no matter where you are located, but some beekeeping situations will depend on your location for an appropriate answer.

The first thing I would want to know about your situation is were you seeing empty queen cups or queen cells with royal jelly and larvae in them? If they are empty cups, I would do nothing. Even if the bees are making actual supercedure cells, my inclination would be to let them. If they are serious about replacing the queen, there may be a reason. She may have issues that we do not see--not strong or not well mated. This is just my opinion, and I would welcome others to chime in.

Ask the second guy if he is going to shell out 20 bucks for the new queen if all is not well in 3weeks. With the queen cells, you have a much better chance of having a viable queen in 3 weeks.

I will have to look to see if the cells are empty. Being a beginner I did not know what to look for. I just saw the queen cells and assumed they were making a new queen. But, my thoughts are with yours; maybe the bees know something we don't about the queen that is in there now. And, as my first mentor said to me, they may choose to keep the queen they have now. If the cells are empty do I scrape them off or just let them handle it? I just want to do the right thing for my first hive. Have you seen a lot of new hives where they just accept the queen and not try to supercede?

"If the cells are empty do I scrape them off or just let them handle it?"

If the cells are empty and just part of a queen cell or a queen cup, leave them alone, hives old and new build queen cups and tear them down. Its kind of like practice for queen cells when they need them.

I looked at a hive today in the same situation. I advised leaving the bees to do what they know best. Many introduced queens are superceded, many are not. The act of packaging and shipping them is very stressful on bees. Many times they blame any heavy stress on the queen. I have always thought the bees knew what was best.

I am thinking that either decision I make will work, but I have a gut feeling that letting nature take it's course is best. Thanks for the help. Wish me and "my girls" luck!