are the queens there

[northy1983]

ok, so ive been beekeeping for a couple years now and still learning. ive not made a swarm before. i kind of thought how i should do it, which is where the story begins.

first i had i strong colony, which produced Q cells, when they were capped over i split the hive. so i had 2 hives now. At this point i should of kept my eye on the capped cells in hive 1 and watched for the first one to emerge, then destroyed the remaining, which now i know i should of done, but unfortunatly i did not do this, the result was the original hive split itself again. luckily the swarm went into a nearby tree, so i put this into a new hive. Now 2 weeks later the original queen which is in hive 2 is there, strong and laying. But in hive 1 and 3 there is no queen to be seen, or eggs and in hive 3, no capped brood.

my question is: -
what do i do from here?

 

[oliver90owner]

Be patient. Wait.

RAB

 

[justme]

ok, so ive been beekeeping for a couple years now and still learning. ive not made a swarm before. i kind of thought how i should do it, which is where the story begins.

first i had i strong colony, which produced Q cells, when they were capped over i split the hive. so i had 2 hives now. At this point i should of kept my eye on the capped cells in hive 1 and watched for the first one to emerge, then destroyed the remaining, which now i know i should of done, but unfortunatly i did not do this, the result was the original hive split itself again. luckily the swarm went into a nearby tree, so i put this into a new hive. Now 2 weeks later the original queen which is in hive 2 is there, strong and laying. But in hive 1 and 3 there is no queen to be seen, or eggs and in hive 3, no capped brood.

my question is: -
what do i do from here?

The plan should be to remove qc's before capping as they will normally swarm before then.

If its only been 2 weeks, dont panic, can take 3 weeks or some say longer for the queen to start laying. Of course, depending on what the weathers like where you are I guess there could be problems wiith them mating. I'm in the same situation as far as having virgin queens needing to mate.

Someone else will come along in a minute who has more experience:.)

Di.

 

[Midland Beek]

Well, you didn't do too bad for a first attempt. Being able to artificially swarm your bees is something that all beeks should perhaps learn, and it is covered in all the books.

As per RAB's comments, a new queen has a window of opportunity in which to mate and start laying eggs and it is about a month long.

 

[northy1983]

cheers all for the advice. my mind is at ease

 

[oliver90owner]

MB,

We don't know whether the poster A/Sed the colony or not.

Certainly, if the general instructions were followed it is much less likely that a cast results.

I think it was simply 'split' as the poster indicated, so had little value with regards to swarming activity.

Regards, RAB