Queen cup or developed cell?
An empty cup is not the same as a charged queen cell containing an egg or larva, and an open developed cell is different again from a capped cell. Record the stage rather than simply writing “queen cell”.
Context matters
Look for eggs, young larvae, queen presence or absence, brood pattern, colony strength, available space and the number and position of cells.
Do not make a decision from one clue
Queen cells can be associated with swarming, supersedure or emergency queen replacement. Those labels depend on the wider colony picture and timeline.
Preserve the timeline
Dates matter because queen development moves quickly. Record when the cell was first seen, its stage and what action you took, then schedule the next check.
HiveIQ keeps the sequence together
A mentor is more useful when it can see the previous queen sightings, brood stages and queen-cell events. That is the colony-specific context HiveIQ is designed to retain.