Had a langstroth nuc with queen cells. Was transferring a frame to a top bar hive I was hoping to get started and had to cut the frame down to fit. In the process the comb fell apart. Luckily there was still a nice 4" x 5" chunk in one piece which had the two queen cells. Was not sure how to attach this to a top bar. On the fly it was pretty easy to attach the bottom of the chunk, which slid out from the bottom of the original frame, to a top bar I sawed in half and screwed back together. I know a queen won't lay in upside down brood, but I was hoping the existing brood and queen cells would hatch out and then I could scrap this frame. In hindsight now I am concerned that maybe having the queen cell upside down (pointing up) could be a bad thing. What I have now is a queenless tbh with the 4x5 upside down chunk frame with 2 queen cells, the original frame cut to fit with spacers and an inch of the orignal comb on basically like a starter strip, and then around 10 top bars with no drawn comb. In addition I shook in 2 frames of bees from the orignal nuc. Any advice on this? Have I ruined the queen cells? Should I cut out the queen cells and reattach them? I've never cut queen cells so am unsure how to attach them to a frame. Thanks, dmac
Was this the only comb you installed? If you installed more comb, perhaps there are other eggs they could utilize if needed. Even when capped (on day 9 of the queen 16 day calender), the cells can be easily damaged up to day 11. After day 11, the pupae being in contact with the royal jelly plug is not needed. If the larvae/pupae does not stay in contact with the royal jelly plug for at least 11 days, a dead queen will result. I never had a queen cell mature and open up side down. But never tried it.
