Artificial swarm, swarmed!

[Tomo]

Yesterday was fun. Bank holiday Monday did AS on overwintered colony which was on the last week of bailey change. Put HM into brand new commercial BB with all new foundation. Put her and frame of brood and food with absolutely 100% certain no Qc's. Yesterday checked the box only to find 6 freshly sealed QC's on the bottom of a brand new frame! That's 7 full days! HM was gone, luckily spotted a medium sized swarm getting bigger by the minute 6ft away in the bottom of a bush (did I cause the swarm to happen at that time by inspecting?). My Mrs spotted HM once I got them onto a hive lid. Put HM and as many bees as I could into spare hive and smoked/encouraged the rest to fly so hopefully the damage is limited. I have put a QE on the bottom of BB which houses the queen that swarmed. How long can I keep this on? I am surprised that she swarmed at all, she had loads of space and newly drawn comb to lay in and some of her own brood. I removed all but one QC in both the original bailey change hive and the hive that the queen swarmed from. I now have 2 queenless hives waiting for a virgin to emerge. I want to end up with two colonies. How should I approach this and how do you stop swarm fever setting in? Thanks.

 

[VEG]

did you shake all the bees off the frame you moved?
bees are very good at hiding queen cells.

 

[Tomo]

Yes definitely no QC's. Even still, the QC's were on brand new frames! All I can think of is that the cells were sealed just before I turned up!

 

[Cazza]

I have come to the conclusion that there is precious little you can do to stop the swarming instinct,delay, yes, stop, no.

By all means ensure there is plenty of space for laying and honey stores and a demaree will hold them back. Sure as eggs is eggs, at some point you will AS (or let them go if that's your bag.)

Cazza
Is there something in the season, I too have had an AS swarm with new QC's on fresh wax? - never had this happen before.

 

[Finman]

.
If you keep those virgins, you get the best grade swarmer bees into your hives. - for this summer and for next years.

 

[Tomo]

So Finman, what would you suggest I do? Kill the queens, reunite and introduce a less swarmy queen? Incidentally the beekeeper I got the original overwintered colony from said they were not particularly swarmy, just bees! Not sure what to do for the best, can do without a swarm every five minutes..... I will inspect her again in a couple of days to check. She doesn't have a lot of bees with her now so I would be amazed if they tried it again.