Does the presence of a virgin queen inhibit a hive from building emergency queen cells? I seem to remember reading somewhere that virgin queens do not have pheromones right away. I recently split hives and installed a ripe queen cell immediately while making the splits. Checked back after a few weeks (when the new queen should have been mated and laying) and noticed that the hives had produced their own emergency cells. These had apparently emerged after a week and a half and killed the virgin that hatched from the cell I intentionally added in the beginning. My cell appeared to have emerged, as the end was open the day after installing it. I only checked two of the hives (out of 120 that I did in that batch) but figure if the first random two hives I opened were in this condition then it would be the same with most of them. Contrarily, earlier in the season I harvested mated queens from nucs and added a ripe queen cell at the same time and had good results, the nucs apparently accepting the virgin and not producing emergency cells. I welcome hearing about any of your experiences with queen cells. Jeremy Rose San Luis Obispo, CA *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm