First swarm of the year

[Splitter]

I had a small swarm escape my garden apiary today. They came out of the split I did a couple of weeks ago. Assuming I missed a queen cell and left them with two or more. I managed to retrieve them from the neighbours garden. Got away with it this time!

Suffolk

 

[Sutty]

In those circumstances I'd have been tempted to unite the swarm directly with the queenless hive. I've done this successfully before. I just took a block of frames out to make a space, shaking off the bees, then sprayed the swarm in their box twice, tipping them around a bit in between, sprayed the gap in the hive and dumped the swarm in before slowly replacing the frames. It worked a treat but maybe I was just lucky. Would need to remove EQCs 1st - mine was hopelessly queenless.

 

[Splitter]

In those circumstances I'd have been tempted to unite the swarm directly with the queenless hive. I've done this successfully before. I just took a block of frames out to make a space, shaking off the bees, then sprayed the swarm in their box twice, tipping them around a bit in between, sprayed the gap in the hive and dumped the swarm in before slowly replacing the frames. It worked a treat but maybe I was just lucky. Would need to remove EQCs 1st - mine was hopelessly queenless.

That's interesting. Did you spray them with just water, or sugar solution, or something else?

The plan for tomorrow is to pull down any emergency cells they have started making and unite with newspaper. Will be interesting to see if they accept the new queen, or prefer to make more emergency cells. I only removed the queen a couple of days ago so there will be young larvae in there.

 

[Sutty]

That's interesting. Did you spray them with just water, or sugar solution, or something else?

The plan for tomorrow is to pull down any emergency cells they have started making and unite with newspaper. Will be interesting to see if they accept the new queen, or prefer to make more emergency cells. I only removed the queen a couple of days ago so there will be young larvae in there.

Sorry I forgot to put in "air freshener" Glade to be specific.

 

[Splitter]

Well, I got to the bottom of my swarm issue today. Feeling a bit silly to be honest.

For some reason I thought leaving the queenless half of my Pagden AS with a fairly mature queen cell (just about ready to cap) would be OK. I didn't think they would draw up lots of emergency cells as well, but of course they had eggs and young larvae so they did.

Looked in the colony today and found a virgin running around, far fewer bees and lots of emergency cells (some capped, some already emerged. Kicking myself for not going in after a week and knocking them down. I suspect they have lost a number of swarms.

It's been a learning day at least, won't make that mistake again.

 

[Sutty]

Oops!
I've done similar in the past, and even realised I needed to go back & then forgot