Advice needed please.

[Queenswood Apiary]

I got my 1st Nuc in May all was going good until I had a swarm, luckily for me my Queen was clipped so ended up on the lawn, I caged her and placed 3 frames from the original hive into hive 2 along with 3 new waxed foundation frames and also shook in a couple of frames. She is doing brilliantly as of today, loads of brood in all stages. The original hive I checked last week and I thought I had removed all capped Queen cells just leaving one remaining, I have since lost a cast swarm so opened hive up today to find 2 empty Queen cells so am I right in assuming one Queen has gone in the cast swarm and one remains? I did look for the Queen but no sighting and obviously no eggs just stores. Just to complicate things I also had a swarm arrive in my garden on the 17th June, these have been placed into a 6 frame nuc and started feeding after 3 days, inspected today found the Queen tried to catch and mark but my god was she fast, so ended up loosing her in the hive. Now there are no signs of eggs etc so again I am assuming she has not matted yet, its been 9 days since I caught the swarm, should she have matted by now? What would you guys do in this situation, I only intended having 2 hives and obviously the swarm can not stay in the Nuc box for to long. I was hoping to see Queen in the original hive wait until she was laying then offer up the swarm to anyone who wanted them, but wanted to ensure I had a Queen myself, am I being to impatient?

 

[enrico]

no one knows if you have a queen in your swarmed hive or not. You cannot assume, you just have to wait and see. The arriving swarm seems coincidental. If you have no other beekeepers nearby I would bet it is your own. In which case you have two virgins.dont try and mark a virgin, let them be for at least two more weeks before you make any decisions and even two after that if necessary. It is easy enough to combine hives at a later date, not so easy to conjure up a queen. Yes.....be patient, very patient

 

[Queenswood Apiary]

no one knows if you have a queen in your swarmed hive or not. You cannot assume, you just have to wait and see. The arriving swarm seems coincidental. If you have no other beekeepers nearby I would bet it is your own. In which case you have two virgins.dont try and mark a virgin, let them be for at least two more weeks before you make any decisions and even two after that if necessary. It is easy enough to combine hives at a later date, not so easy to conjure up a queen. Yes.....be patient, very patient

Thanks for the reply, I am pretty sure it wasn't my swarm, we do have a few beekeepers around me. I thought I was probably being impatient, I am just a little concerned just how long the swarm can stay in the Nuc box.

 

[enrico]

Once there is brood in there they will stay until they feel they are short of room when they may swarm again. If they need to draw out foundation that will take a while. They should be ok until you start to see a couple of frames of eggs but then again they might change their minds and decide it isn't big enough and disappear. It is impossible to be certain!

 

[Queenswood Apiary]

So should I leave the weekly inspections on my original hive and the Nuc for a few weeks until hopefully the Queens have mated and started to lay?

 

[drex]

I understand your desire to stick at two hives, however I always like to have a spare queen in a nucs or two. If she turns out to be worth keeping, you could always use her as a brood factory, bleeding off frames of capped brood to boost your main colonies. That way I can keep nucs an optimum size and take them through winter

 

[hemo]

So should I leave the weekly inspections on my original hive and the Nuc for a few weeks until hopefully the Queens have mated and started to lay?

Yes most definitely, let them get on with life and leave the queens to do their thing. All you need to know is they have stores .

 

[Queenswood Apiary]

I understand your desire to stick at two hives, however I always like to have a spare queen in a nucs or two. If she turns out to be worth keeping, you could always use her as a brood factory, bleeding off frames of capped brood to boost your main colonies. That way I can keep nucs an optimum size and take them through winter

Yeh I can see the advantages of keeping more than 2, but at the moment this is in my back garden hence limiting it to 2 hives, future plans might be an out Apiary. So you just remove brood frames and place them into you other hives as and when they are full?

 

[enrico]

I certainly would not be doing religious inspections with the unmated hives. I would go in every couple of weeks and look at a couple of centre frames to check for eggs and that would be it. If you are confident they are new queen's it is unlikely that they will swarm again for a while!

 

[enrico]

Yeh I can see the advantages of keeping more than 2, but at the moment this is in my back garden hence limiting it to 2 hives, future plans might be an out Apiary. So you just remove brood frames and place them into you other hives as and when they are full?

Yes but shake most of the bees off first and make sure the queen is not on them

 

[Swarm]

I certainly would not be doing religious inspections with the unmated hives. I would go in every couple of weeks and look at a couple of centre frames to check for eggs and that would be it. If you are confident they are new queen's it is unlikely that they will swarm again for a while!

Generally I'd agree with you Eric but some colonies this year have only one thing on their minds. Splitting queens away has resulted in both halves going into swarm mode, whereas I would normally nuc the queen and leave the colony with a cell and that would pretty much be it. We have a handful of colonies that persisted in drawing cells as soon as eggs were available, each split being further split. Add to that the number of reports of Demarrees that failed to prevent swarming.
Abnormal behaviour for my bees and no explanation why others are ticking along happily as normal.

 

[Queenswood Apiary]

From what I am reading swarming does seem to be a big problem this season for what ever reasons, but it's all good experience for a new beekeeper for sure

 

[pargyle]

Generally I'd agree with you Eric but some colonies this year have only one thing on their minds. Splitting queens away has resulted in both halves going into swarm mode, whereas I would normally nuc the queen and leave the colony with a cell and that would pretty much be it. We have a handful of colonies that persisted in drawing cells as soon as eggs were available, each split being further split. Add to that the number of reports of Demarrees that failed to prevent swarming.
Abnormal behaviour for my bees and no explanation why others are ticking along happily as normal.

It's been a wierd year all round .. the weather patterns are not helping.. I've heard a lot of reports of Nucs swarming but to some extent I'd dismissed them as beekeepers keeping them in nucs too long - possibly because of adverse weather but ... it appears that something ouf of the normal run of things is going on ...May well be weather related - who knows ?

 

[pargyle]

From what I am reading swarming does seem to be a big problem this season for what ever reasons, but it's all good experience for a new beekeeper for sure

well ... it's good experience but ... not so good losing swarms which a lot of new beekeepers are doing ...

 

[Erichalfbee]

Definitely weird.
I have a litany of disasters this year, more than others. One Demaree swarmed.
One failed mating and laying workers in two and a half weeks! Shaken out today. A failed queen
A brood box full( really full) of drones. Not drone brood but drones

 

[Murox]

It's been a wierd year all round .. the weather patterns are not helping.. I've heard a lot of reports of Nucs swarming but to some extent I'd dismissed them as beekeepers keeping them in nucs too long - possibly because of adverse weather but ... it appears that something ouf of the normal run of things is going on ...May well be weather related - who knows ?

I think the stop start, good weather bad weather in short succession has upset the natural rhythm to some extent. Interestingly the long deep hives I am using have shown no desire to swarm, not even the red dot queen hive. She has been slow to build up this year but recently made up for it.

 

[Queenswood Apiary]

well ... it's good experience but ... not so good losing swarms which a lot of new beekeepers are doing ...

No I guess its never good losing bees, but it's natural for them to do it, I wonder how many wild colonies of Bee's have originated from someone's hive??

 

[enrico]

Generally I'd agree with you Eric but some colonies this year have only one thing on their minds. Splitting queens away has resulted in both halves going into swarm mode, whereas I would normally nuc the queen and leave the colony with a cell and that would pretty much be it. We have a handful of colonies that persisted in drawing cells as soon as eggs were available, each split being further split. Add to that the number of reports of Demarrees that failed to prevent swarming.
Abnormal behaviour for my bees and no explanation why others are ticking along happily as normal.

There will always be risks but the risk of a relatively inexperienced beekeeper harming a new queen would be just as risky in my opinion! Good for him to have more than one opinion though as the one of us that is wrong wil get the pleasure of saying I told you so! Usually not me at the moment!

 

[Erichalfbee]

No I guess its never good losing bees, but it's natural for them to do it, I wonder how many wild colonies of Bee's have originated from someone's hive??

Most I should imagine and very few get through their first winter by all accounts

 

[The Poot]

Definitely weird.
I have a litany of disasters this year, more than others. One Demaree swarmed.
One failed mating and laying workers in two and a half weeks! Shaken out today. A failed queen
A brood box full( really full) of drones. Not drone brood but drones

Interesting about drones. I’ve reported twice that one colony has killed and evicted drones as soon as the weather turned bad this year. When inspecting, I found no shortage of food stores, but just so many drones hanging on the food frames. Like you, Dani, not excessive drone brood, but loads of drones.