Queen Cup
Lexikon
Queen cups are small, cup-shaped globs of wax that bees build on the comb surface or at the comb edge, without the queen having laid an egg into them yet.
Queen cups are small, cup-shaped globs of wax that bees build on the comb surface or at the comb edge, without the queen having laid an egg into them yet. They count as a precursor to a real queen cell: only once the queen lays an egg do the worker bees extend the cup into the elongated, downward-open queen cell. As long as that does not happen, it stays the small, round shape.
For beekeepers, queen cups are an important early warning sign, even though they do not yet mean immediate swarm danger. According to consistent recommendations, one should not simply destroy them but mark the affected comb and check again after about seven to nine days. If the cups then contain an egg or already larvae, that is a clear sign of incipient swarming mood.
A common misunderstanding among beginners is to regard every queen cup found as immediate proof of an impending swarm and to react in a panic. Many colonies regularly build queen cups in spring without an actual swarm cell ever developing from them. What matters is not the presence of the cup itself, but whether the queen later lays an egg into it.