missed swarm

[smudger]

My bees swarmed last week, I think Wednesday or Thursday and I missed it. I was a couple of days late with my weekly check and when i went through them late thursday afternoon I found 5 sealed queen cells and the original queen had gone along with some of the bees.

I looked through my books at what to do next and friday after work I looked through the hive thoroughly to see if I could find a queen and there was not one. So I got rid of all the queen cells and left the biggest one.

I am just checking that what I did was correct and what to do next. Do I leave the bees alone for a few weeks and then check that the queen hatched out ok and is beginning to lay ?

They bees seem a bit more aggressive at the moment, is this because there is no queen ? I am a bit worried about this as I keep the hive in my garden.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Aaron

 

[susbees]

When there are only sealed cells it's a difficult call: it is possible if you didn't look hard at the cell that the one you chose was resealed from a hatched queen, that it could be empty or with an entombed worker (or even drone as I found squeezed into a recapped one recently!), or that the cell is unviable. So leaving two is sometimes a good strategy especially if you have only one hive: the theory being that first queen hatched will destroy the other although a cast swarm is possible. They can of course continue to make emergency cells for another few days and if you want to be reasonably certain of a new queen a big larva in a good pool of royal jelly in an (obviously!) open QC is the one you should keep.

If your queen wasn't marked and she isn't one you see regularly she could still be there but off lay.

If they are aggressive they may be hungry. Did you note the level of stores? Many bees are being fed through the June gap, but not so that they store in honey supers of course. This is more so with hives which have had honey extracted recently.

 

[smudger]

My queen was marked and easy to find so im sure she has gone. They have plenty of stores as well ive got two supers on and one is very full. I did have a lot of OSR around me so the honey in the supers that I left after extraction might have granulated by now, are they still able to eat that ?