Queen Cells

Four types of queen cells are distinguished :

1. Natural swarming queen cells
2. Emergency queen cells
3. Supersedure queen cells
4. Artificial queen cells


Natural swarming queen cells	Emergency queen cell	Supersedure queen cell	Artificial queen cells

In spring, worker bees build swarming queen cells. Depending on the subspecies, 2–20 cells may be found along the edge of one or several brood frames. This is the natural process of colony division. The old queen departs with (more or less) half of the colony. The primary swarm may be followed by secondary swarms with virgin queens.
When the queen disappears abruptly (often due to improper handling by the beekeeper), the queenless workers urgently construct an emergency queen cell from a cell containing a larva of varying age. From this centrally located cell, a queen of often lower quality emerges, because the selected larva was not fed exclusively on royal jelly. Reminder: a worker larva is fed royal jelly for 3 days, then a mixture of honey and pollen for 3 days. One or more additional cells are built a few hours later along the edge of the frame from cells containing very young larvae fed exclusively on royal jelly, which will produce good-quality queens. Unfortunately, the central emergency cell emerges first, and the queen destroys the still-sealed queen cells. The beekeeper therefore removes the central emergency cell in favour of the peripheral cells.
In autumn, workers build one or two supersedure queen cells to replace an ageing queen or one with declining egg-laying performance. This phenomenon may also occur after a formic acid treatment. This type of rearing is not followed by swarming.
The breeder grafts larvae less than 24 hours old from selected queens into cell cups, which are introduced into queenless colonies for artificial rearing. The queens produced are then transferred to mating stations with selected drones in order to improve the qualities of the offspring.

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Queen Cells

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