In the panic I've forgotten what to do --swarming

[Eyeman]

I reinforce the need to check after 3 days for more queen cells. I lost a swarm on Monday, inspected and reduced QCs to 2 on Tuesday and on Friday I found a further four when I inspected. I'm intending to leave them 2 QCs for a replacement queen and hope they don't send out a cast swarm with the spare one!

CVB

After losing a swarm if you leave an uncapped queen cell then it wont emerge for 8+ days nor will any emergency QC's. Better to leave them a week before re-inspection to knock down any emergency QC's as they will be that much more visible and after 1 week there wont be larvae of the right age for the bees to use to raise further queens (youngest larvae will be 4 days old)?

 

[olriley]

If they are all sealed then it's a two and try to inspect on emergence day....
.

And may I ask what you might find and subsequent action? Doing just that later today for the first time!


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[Beefriendly]

Sometimes too early...but if there are signs of one emerging I assist
....sort of virgin queen midwife. And crush other cell....or do nothing.

 

[ShinySideUp]

Went in today and found they had made many other queen cells. Some were capped, some were not, but in any event there were shed loads of bees despite the swarm. I knocked down all but one QC and will go in in a few days time and knock down any more until the virgin queen has emerged. I saved one queen cell and shook the bees off all the other frames so I could have a good look only to find that the QC I had kept was rather smaller than some others I had to destroy as I had already shaken the frame and could have ruined the occupant.

Well what's done is done and I am now committed to the QC I kept. Long may she reign.

 

[charlievictorbravo]

Further to my post #17 on this thread, I checked my two queen cells on Monday - 7 days after the swarm took off - but they were both still sealed. Checked again on Tuesday - 7 days after I found them - still sealed. Checked them yesterday (Wednesday) - 9 days after the swarm and 8 days after the QCs were found - still sealed.

Today was s**t or bust day so I opened the hive and found the QCs were both still unopened so I very gingerly cut the cap off one of them and out walked a very handsome, if rather yellow, virgin queen. I removed the cap from the other cell and found no signs of life so I cut the whole cell out for inspection under a microscope. I found it was a nearly fully developed bee but rather small and very dead. I'm rather glad I left two QCs rather than one as I could have chosen the duff one!

By my reckoning, the live queen larva/bee had been in the cell for at least 9 warm days - possibly 10 - and the weather down here has been and is forecast to be pretty good. I can think of no reason why the warden/nurse bees would want to confine her. Any plausible explanations?

 

[Bakerbee]

As a new bee i very nearly made the mistake of counting 16 days for emmergence from first noticing the qc. Thankfully while chatting to hivemaker regard my queens i bought he reminded me not to forget to count the days they were eggs. So i just csught mine in time. This is a point to very new beeks that might count as i did from noticing the build of qc instead of egg.