baldrickbee
New Bee
Hi Please could you advise me. I have had colonies of bees for a year but this is my first encounter with the swarm season. A couple of weeks back I failed to find the marked queen with the intention of making a nuc for swarm control. A few days latter i found cluster on hive front, boxed them up and took to another apiary site though not sure if it was a proper swarm with the queen that is clipped or just a group of flying bees. I read i could do an artificial swarm on the colony even if the queen is not found. At this stage I believed the queen was probably still in the original colony so i did the artificial swarm. Next day i discover the queen was in the swarm now re-hived at the other apiary. So i have split the colony which was queenless before the split. 2 days before i did the artificial swarm i knocked out all Q cells 23/5 (mistake)2 days latter on 25/5 In the original brood body were four uncapped QC's. I put a Frame of Bias in the new brood body on the flying site. Today 6 days latter (31/5) The queen cells are sealed. My question is should i move the brood box to the other side of the hive body to transfer flying bees into it or reduce the QC to just one in both colonies before the new queen emerges in a few days. I understand hives will not produce casts if there is only one QC present or a lack of flying bees when the virgin emerges. Or because they have been made queenless and the bees are responding to an emergency queen loss problem this scenario will not arise. Instead the queen will emerge and kill any others in the hive then go on mating flight so i don't need to worry about swarming . Thanks for your views on this