have I done the right thing??

[suedavies0117]

went to my bees today, the weather here has been awful so I was unable to do a weekly check on sunday, today is first dry day - I had sealed queen cells, at least 8 and several uncapped queen cells

I only had 1 and half frames of spare stores which I put into an empty hive with two frames of brood plus their bees which included the unsealed queen cell, I destroyed the other capped cells and hopefully did not include the original queen, filled the rest of the hive with new comb and plan to add a feeder with syrup tomorrow. I couldent find the queen in the original hive she had swarmed last year from my first hive unexpectedly as it was a nucleus but the queen had been accidently left in the nucleus so I have closed the hive with her still inside, there should be no more queen cells in that hive so my question is have I done the right thing in the circumstances with limited stores at my disposal

my two other hives had no sealed stores so I plan to feed them as well in case the weather nosedives again to give them chance to build some supplies

I live at 1300ft above sea level in a very exposed location and we are at least 6 weeks behind with our spring flowers, bluebells only just coming out here so feel they need extra help at the moment

any comments or advice would be welcome

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I'm unsure what kind of manipulation you were trying to do at the moment.
Your queen probably went when the first cell was capped - so now you have a nuc with an unsealed QC and a colony which is probably hopelessly queenless with no means of making another QC. I'd go back in to the main hive and have a very good look for any eggs and (if your very lucky) the queen. If no sign of either, get the open queen cell back in there. if there are still eggs, hope they make an emergency QC

 

[suedavies0117]

I am confident that the queen is still present, as I said in my post the weather here has been pretty dreadful so she would not have had the opportunity to swarm, also there don't appear to be any loss of bees from what I observed the last time I inspected them which was last sunday' - 10 days ago

I was trying to split the colony before they actually swarmed due to the weather today being much better, it was still very windy here and quite cold, got up to about 60 degrees in the late afternoon but was hovering around 50 this morning

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

were there eggs?(not that that's a definitive indicator - queen will continue laying right up until swarming)
If the weather was fine enough for you to open up, it was fine enough for the bees to swarm. using the amount of bees left in the hive as an indicator of swarming is never going to work - bees still emerge from cells after the swarm has left and more often than not you won't see a discernible difference in population density. I prefer to go by
a) presence of QC's especially sealed ones.
b)No sign of queen

Taking a couple of frames with a queen cell out of the main hive does not constitute a 'split' or any form of swarm control

 

[drstitson]

"destroyed the other capped cells and hopefully did not include the original queen"

swarm leaves around time of capping first QC. Unless weather REALLY bad.

"I am confident that the queen is still present .... there don't appear to be any loss of bees from what I observed the last time I inspected them which was last sunday' - 10 days ago"

a lot of brood can hatch in 10 days PLUS during the day most flying bees will be out of the hive. just like if they'd swarmed. unless you inspect last thing in evening every time you can easily be tricked into thinking no bees lost.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I agree
The only way you can be confident the queen is there in the presence of sealed queen cells is if you see her.
Put that nuc's worth of bees and QC back.
If there are small larvae have a look back in a few days to make sure there are no emergency queen cells.

 

[biglongdarren]

About a month ago now my friend had a hive on double brood that hadn't been checked for a good 2/3 weeks due to the weather, he had a swarm come out of it on a friday which he caught, the very next day he was there when a virgin queen came back to the same hive from her mating flight.

Darren