KateW
New Bee
Hi everyone,
We’re new-ish (4th year) beekeepers dealing with our first swarm/post-swarm experience.
The background: On April 20 we split an overwintered hive (2 deep & busy brood boxes), after finding a charged queen cell and a cup with an egg in it, for swarm prevention purposes. We used the walk-away method, kept the queen in the box in the new location and left the hive in the old location to raise a new queen. Both had 7–8 full frames of eggs / brood in all stages / food. We added additional supers to each.
Last Wednesday (May 8) the old-location hive swarmed anyway, alas. Presumably they left with the first virgin queen that hatched.
The current situation: During yesterday’s inspection, we found a new charged queen cell in the NEW-location hive, with the overwintered, productive queen. She’s still going strong – we saw her yesterday and there’s plenty of eggs in that hive.
So, my question is: what does this single, charged queen cell indicate? Is this hive likely to swarm too, or is it more likely supercedure? There was only this one cell, and the few cups were all empty. We knocked down the queen cell to try to buy ourselves a few more days (we’re hobbyists with somewhat inflexible work schedules) and plan to check for cells again next Saturday. If we find some, can we split that hive AGAIN? Is that likely to prevent further swarm activity, or no?
I should mention that we’re urban beekeepers (hives in a public park) and want to avoid swarms as much as possible, for the usual reasons but also to maintain the goodwill of the neighbourhood we’re in. If we split the Q+ hive again, we’d have to give away one half, because we’re not allowed to have more than 2 hives in the park…
Any thoughts or advice HUGELY appreciated. Happy to provide more info if I’ve forgotten anything important! Thanks so much.
We’re new-ish (4th year) beekeepers dealing with our first swarm/post-swarm experience.
The background: On April 20 we split an overwintered hive (2 deep & busy brood boxes), after finding a charged queen cell and a cup with an egg in it, for swarm prevention purposes. We used the walk-away method, kept the queen in the box in the new location and left the hive in the old location to raise a new queen. Both had 7–8 full frames of eggs / brood in all stages / food. We added additional supers to each.
Last Wednesday (May 8) the old-location hive swarmed anyway, alas. Presumably they left with the first virgin queen that hatched.
The current situation: During yesterday’s inspection, we found a new charged queen cell in the NEW-location hive, with the overwintered, productive queen. She’s still going strong – we saw her yesterday and there’s plenty of eggs in that hive.
So, my question is: what does this single, charged queen cell indicate? Is this hive likely to swarm too, or is it more likely supercedure? There was only this one cell, and the few cups were all empty. We knocked down the queen cell to try to buy ourselves a few more days (we’re hobbyists with somewhat inflexible work schedules) and plan to check for cells again next Saturday. If we find some, can we split that hive AGAIN? Is that likely to prevent further swarm activity, or no?
I should mention that we’re urban beekeepers (hives in a public park) and want to avoid swarms as much as possible, for the usual reasons but also to maintain the goodwill of the neighbourhood we’re in. If we split the Q+ hive again, we’d have to give away one half, because we’re not allowed to have more than 2 hives in the park…
Any thoughts or advice HUGELY appreciated. Happy to provide more info if I’ve forgotten anything important! Thanks so much.