Queen cup (centre) - a honey bee colony in the initial stages of preparing to swarm.
A queen cup is a special cell used by the colony to raise a new queen bee. When the current queen lays an egg in a queen cup, the bees continue building the queen cup and then seal it - at which point the current queen and up to half the worker bees leave the hive, as a swarm, to establish a new nest/hive site. The remaining hive/colony is queenless until the queen cell hatches and the new queen emerges - some 16-17 days after the egg was laid in the queen cup. That new queen will not become fertile until she has mated, and the time taken (and success of that mating) depends on a number of factors including the weather, predation, and availability of drone bees.
Because this cup is at the edge of a frame, it is more likely to be a swarm cell rather than one for supercedure or an emergency cell.
The picture above reveals that the queen cup had not been activated by the queen laying an egg in it.
It's likely that the colony will persist with its efforts to create queen cups and get the queen bee to lay eggs in them in order to enable swarming i.e. to enable the colony to reproduce.
The process of swarming indicates the colony is healthy.
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