2 queens in a swarm?

[JohnyP]

Just went through a hive which was a swarm I collected 9 days ago. Unless my eyes were deceiving me, I thought I saw 2 virgin queens on adjacent frames. There were signs of the first few eggs being laid.

Tosh or not?

 

[pargyle]

Just went through a hive which was a swarm I collected 9 days ago. Unless my eyes were deceiving me, I thought I saw 2 virgin queens on adjacent frames. There were signs of the first few eggs being laid.

Tosh or not?

2 VIRGINS and eggs being laid ? So you have a mated queen as well ??

 

[B+.]

2 VIRGINS and eggs being laid ? So you have a mated queen as well ??

I have taken swarms that contain multiple queens but they usually sort it out before very long.
I would think one of those queens will be despatched pretty soon.

 

[JohnyP]

2 VIRGINS and eggs being laid ? So you have a mated queen as well ??

S'pose that's true, ha ha

 

[Hawklord]

2 VIRGINS and eggs being laid ? So you have a mated queen as well ??

Could be a drone layer.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

I have taken swarms that contain multiple queens but they usually sort it out before very long.
I would think one of those queens will be despatched pretty soon.

A few weeks ago while at the association apiary a swarm appeared outside the site over some set aside land. Part of it settled while the remainder landed some distance away. We caught both in separate nucs. Both have now formed laying colonies.

 

[pargyle]

Could be a drone layer.

It's a possibility but thinking about a swarm and what leads up to it I'd say unlikely ... if anything it's possible that the old queen was late swarming, a virgin had already emerged and when the swarm went off she got caught up with them and thus there were two queens in the swarm ...one laying and a virgin ... Which will survive? .. Watch out for the next exciting episode of ... Who will be queen ?

 

[Roola]

Why not also consider the most likely scenario, could it not have been the same queen? Many a time I've replaced a frame with the queen on it slowly, maybe briefly done something like tuck my gloves back over before moving to the next frame and low and behold, she's wandered over there.

 

[majika]

Two swarm into bait hive...

Hi just thought this would be of interest in this post. I had a bait hive that had two swarms come into it the other day. One queen was balled outside of the hive and the other queen was in the bait hive. Both were laying queens so they were possibly from two different colonies that had decided to come in on the same day. There was some fighting and a few dead bees outside the hive but not a huge amount so it looks like they integrated the two swarms together.

ttps://youtu.be/Y1k540XVkvQ

(copy link and add an h to the start of the link as cannot submit)

any thoughts on this?

 

[Thymallus]

It's a possibility but thinking about a swarm and what leads up to it I'd say unlikely ... if anything it's possible that the old queen was late swarming, a virgin had already emerged and when the swarm went off she got caught up with them and thus there were two queens in the swarm ...one laying and a virgin ... Which will survive? .. Watch out for the next exciting episode of ... Who will be queen ?

You should read Lindauer's 1955 review some time, here's a small quote from it "I did not expect that sometimes multiple queens go out with a swarm. In such a case it did not help at all to hang the first queen below; the swarm was not made queenless by this procedure, and stayed peacefully hanging above. One had to ransack the swarm for queens until the last one was found; only then did the bees come down to the queen cage. By this opportunity I was able make the surprising observation that multiple queens issue not only with afterswarms, as is asserted in the beekeeping literature, but also sometimes with the prime swarm; in one case I took no less than 5 queens out of such a prime swarm"