Brinkmanship

[thorn]

We inspected the three hives at our out apiary two weeks ago. There were charged queen cells in all three. We only had the equipment with us to deal with one, and planned to return in two days time to deal with the other two.
The weather then deteriorated and there was never a day when we were available and felt it warm enough to go through the hives. We realise we should have done a split without searching for the queens, only one of which was marked, but we kept hoping for a break in the weather.
We went to the apiary yesterday. My car temperature gauge showed six degrees when we got there but the sun was on the hives and a hedge kept the wind off, so in we went. We found both queens and quickly moved them to nucs. We then set about taking the queen cells down. My bee buddy pocketed some of the best with thoughts of putting them in a nursery hive just in case. Later in the day a queen emerged from one.
So not only were we kept at home by the weather but the bees were put off swarming by the cold and wet. Had we waited till the day warmed up we'd have lost them. As it is we have two nucs with mated queens that we've been able to place in one of our new apiaries.

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Look at the Wally Shaw modified Pagden AS method. In a phrase, he messed up and put the Q in the QC side of the AS (away from the flyers). The flyers on the original site raised an EQ and the "parent" tore down the SQCs and got on with its life. Reduced to the extreme the method implies that in a panic situation, you can split and hope, with the whereabouts of the LQ being secondary IF you don't leave SQCs with the flyers, which most of us should be able to manage