A swarm in November one to remember

[kighill]

I had an interesting call this morning Thursday 09/11/2017 from a friend reporting his bees had swarmed. The weather was 10c and overcast, overnight had been -2 with a frost.
This is his first year so I went to have a look and help him out.
On arrival I found a small bird box of around 150mm square covered with and full of bees and another cluster on the fence both within a couple of meters of the hive on checking the hive I could see no sign of this years marked and clipped queen. I did find many Queen cells several of which had hatched and still numerous drones were to be found in the hive.
Looks like I will be uniting them with a hive at home when they sort themselves out.
Real shame I could not find the original queen but I will have another look in a few days (in the very unlikely chance I can find her)

 

[Amari]

Global warming innit?

 

[Bakerbee]

The weather has been crazy. Yesterday in dorset freezing cold, today positively mild. My bees were very active today but to swarm? Surely their primary goal now is to get through the winter, protect dwindling brood, and stores. Im a newbie, can i ask, the ones left in hive with newly hatched queens, you will let them sort themselves out? And the swarm you will unite with a hive to save them? What would you do or happen if you found the original queen in the swarm? Also the ones left with newly emerging queens, are they strong enough to get through winter with the older ones gone. Or do you mean you will reunite ALL of them.

 

[Amari]

The queen(s) left in the hive will be virgins and there is no chance that they could have a successful nuptial flight at this time of year. By spring they will be infertile - their fertility window is quite short.

 

[Bakerbee]

Ahhh yes got it. Silly me to not remember that. Lol. Fingers crossed the unite goes ok. Will you use the newspaper method?

 

[kighill]

This one is quite a challenging scenario due to the time of year but the normal rules usually apply.
First rule of swarm control being fine the queen.
When first checking the hive I found a cluster underneath suggesting the clipped queen may be found underneath, I placed a sheet on the ground and dropped the bees onto it. She could not be seen. She was most likely lost when the first swarm emerged when the cells were sealed.
The bees would then return home having no queen. They will then swarm again when the virgins start to hatch.
My plan is to unite them with a queenwrite colony.
The problem here is the original colony and the two swarms now contain virgin queens. Should I unite them with a colony containing a mated queen battle will commence and I may lose the mated queen.
We are now faced with running out of time to unite with the weather closing in bees are a little reluctant to chew through the paper although they should do so I will have to monitor this.
Here is what I have done so far.
United all three clusters into my skep and taken them back to my Apiary where they will be fed I have put them into a new hive In a few days once the queens have sorted themselves out find the remaining queen and dispatch her.
The original colony still contains queen cells and virgin queens, this colony is still rammed with bees so I have placed a super underneath. Next I will cross my fingers and hope another swarm does not emerge, unfortunately I did not have time to fully check for and remove the remaining cells. I will do this on Saturday whatever the weather.
This leaves me with two hives now containing virgin queens and lots of bees.
I will unite both with a queenwrite colony in the next week hoping I have found all of the virgins and removed them.
Many others will do this in differing ways and another time I may of chose to do so, my immediate aim at the time was to gather the bees with one of the swarms being on the neighbours fence and remove any risk of complaint.
The bees are real beauties with the original queen being a this years Buckfast it was/is such a shame to lose her.
Had I of found the original queen I would of placed her in a Nuc having checked thoroughly for virgins then united them all back together with her in a few days, if only beekeeping was that simple.

 

[Into the lions den]

Very strange.

Are they swarm cells or emergency cells?

Actual normal swarming in November is very unlikely indeed, but it is JUST possible that a very large colony rendered queenless by whatever misfortune raised a stack of emergency cells and was above the critical size for dividing into more than one unit.

I would be wary of the strain, no matter how good it had been in summer, if its true swarming. Likely to give you lots of future problems with out of season 'misbehaviour' if propagated from.

We have no experience of an ivy flow up here, and indeed our bees in Hereford and Swindon have not gathered any either (for years) so I do not know if that flow can trigger a fresh round of swarming. It DOES sound like congestion may also be an issue.

Fascinating one.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Virgin queens, lots of drones, unsuitable weather/time of year, instrumental insemination.

 

[Bakerbee]

Hows the swarm doing? Ive wondered a couple of times if you could update us all.