Good afternoon everyone, I’m located in Middle Tennessee and this is my first season keeping bees. During my last inspection I noticed what looks like a queen cell on one of two newly installed colonies of packaged bees. I wanted to know if this is one and what I my next steps should be.
Here is the timeline form install to when I first noticed what looks to be a Queen Cell.
I installed 2 colonies of packaged bees on April 2nd then came back on the 5th to make sure each queen was out of the cage and into their respective hive. I’ve inspected both hives every 7-8ish days with nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. On Sunday May 3rd I noticed a cell on the top 3rd of the frame that looked like a queen cell. I was able to locate the original queen and noted eggs and brood of all stages
I have noticed that this hive is building out comb slower than the other colony, but I chocked that up to noticeably fewer bees when installed and assumed that would be fixed as new bees were hatched. Could the colony think the queen isn’t laying adequately and attempting to supersede her?
I’ve attached some pictures of some of the frames as well as the cell I am asking about.