Guilfordbeekeepers.org

i opened my hives for the first time yesterday and in both of them only on one frame in each i had these weird looking cells that were kinda sticking out frather than the rest. they also had lots of bees around them that would hardly move even when smoked. could they be queen cells. the hives are both brand new and only about 5 or six of the frames were full/or being used.
here is a link to the pic. the cell is kinda in the middle, uncapped. http://lh3.google.com/lacey.grim/R_0u32 ... 080307.JPG?

The link would not work for me.

But here is a link that may help. Check out post #6.
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthr ... edure+cell

yeah thanks, those photos helped. i think that it is just a drone cell. man the books kinda caused me to worry.

Yesterday I went into a hive that had a lot of capped brood on 3 frames, but no eggs, only a few very old larvae, and no sign of the marked queen. There were 10 capped queen cells in the swarm position at the bottom of 2 frames and 9 capped supersedure cells clustered together on the 3rd frame. These bees seem determined to replace the missing queen. I hope this is not an indicator that they have doubts about the quality of the larvae and are hoping to make up in quantity what they were not able to produce with quality. The hive is not strong enough or crowded enough to be a likely candidate for swarming.

Maybe they have already gone.

This has never been a strong hive or crowded enough to reasonably consider swarming. The numbers in the hive are about what they have always been.