Bees are already preparing to swarm

[Ben90]

This evening, I opened my backyard hive, which has bees I got from a nuc around a month ago. They are doing amazingly well and they have already spread across all brood frames and are drawing out the first super with comb.

When looking at the bottom of the brood box frames, I found at least one queen cup on every frame with brood (about 5 or 6 of them), and two of them already have eggs in them, so I think they're preparing to swarm already.

I have a second brood box and frames/foundation coming in the post in the next day or two, but I'm also waiting on a Snelgrove board that might take as long as another week to arrive, which obviously won't do.

So I've come up with a general plan of action for the swarm:

1) Split colony using my nuc box to carry the queen and some of the bees, replace frames with foundation
2) Wait for new queen to emerge and mate
3) Select either the new queen or old queen depending on how well mated the new queen is
4) Place nuc frames into brood box with the rest as new foundation frames
5) Unite over paper and convert to double-brood

Any feedback would be appreciated.

 

[Stickyfingers]

Sounds like a plan. Pretty much in same position just waiting to see how it pans out and either keep the split or unite.

 

[galileo]

An alternative, should you choose it, would be to wait 'til your new queen is mated and laying, then tranfer the nuc'd queen etc into your second brood box, above the supers, with a QX beneath it and a makeshift entrance (shallow eke with a hole in it). Run the hive as a twin queen stack, rather than nobbling one of them. At the end of the summer flow, keep them as two singles or combine as a double and take them into winter with the silver medal queen in a nuc with a few thousand bees, for a just-in-case backup.

Insurance isn't a bad thing these days.

 

[Excession]

Not a good idea to run a twin queen stack as a newbee, in my opinion...

Do an As using the nucbox for the Q and fliers.
Move Q and fliers into new brood box when it arrives.
Super colonies as required and run two colonies.

 

[Tom Bick]

T
When looking at the bottom of the brood box frames, I found at least one queen cup on every frame with brood (about 5 or 6 of them), and two of them already have eggs in them, so I think they're preparing to swarm already.

Hi Ben queen cups in a hive at this time of year is normal in fact it would be unusual not to have them.

Eggs laid in queen cups are one more notch towards swarming but not always defiantly as the bees often remove the eggs.

I suggest you re-inspect the hive say 4 days after your last inspection and look at the queen cups to see if they are empty or have been advanced to queen cells.

 

[drstitson]

presumably you will only have the one roof, crownboard and floor available?

either use the nuc as suggested or go for a vertical AS as planned.

you don't need the snelgrove. do you have a square of ply and some 20x20 strip wood? knock up a 3 sided frame on top of the board and put that between the two colonies with entrance facing backwards. you can always swap for the snelgrove next week when it arrives.

then decide what to do with the two colonies - keep as two, unite later, run as two queen system (you'll need an extra QE for that), whatever.

 

[Illo]

Hi Ben queen cups in a hive at this time of year is normal in fact it would be unusual not to have them.

Eggs laid in queen cups are one more notch towards swarming but not always defiantly as the bees often remove the eggs.

I suggest you re-inspect the hive say 4 days after your last inspection and look at the queen cups to see if they are empty or have been advanced to queen cells.

Some of mine (the urban bees that I REALLY don't want to swarm so as not to alarm the neighbours) have been on approx 4-day inspections if I see more than the odd Q cup with eggs in. Mostly, there will be a transition to QCs within a few days, but not always. And you have a few days on 'amber alert' to get together the kit to do something about it that's well planned (rather than the usual mad scramble).

LJ

 

[Newtobees]

What ever you do don't knock queen cups/cells down to gain a bit of time i tried that and they swarmed before the next lot of cells were sealed lucky i had a clipped queen.

 

[Ben90]

Okay, I just checked the hive again, and two of the queen cups with eggs have progressed to having larvae and the bees have started drawing the cells down further even since last night.

 

[galileo]

Got that Nuc handy, Ben?

 

[Ben90]

Got that Nuc handy, Ben?

Yep, done.

 

[REDWOOD]

That will do until you get your brood box and frames if the hive is as big as you say, remember that the supers go on the new hive on the old site with the original queen so not to stop the honey production
http://www.wbka.com/images/education/a012queencells.pdf

 

[Ben90]

That will do until you get your brood box and frames if the hive is as big as you say, remember that the supers go on the new hive on the old site with the original queen so not to stop the honey production
http://www.wbka.com/images/education/a012queencells.pdf

Thanks for the link. I've been considering taking the bees out of the super and putting a feeder back on for the time being to encourage the bees to build up the new foundation frames in the brood box so I'm losing less time in the main flow next month. Is that a good or bad idea?

 

[For want of a better word]

What ever you do don't knock queen cups/cells down to gain a bit of time i tried that and they swarmed before the next lot of cells were sealed lucky i had a clipped queen.

It seems that the appearance of any queen cell cup with a larvae and loads of jellywherever it is placed on the frame is the beekeepers notification to carry out an AS asap!

Perhaps it is the weather... or the books need rewriting!