New Hive

[grizzly]

I introduced a new queen to a hive on the 22nd April, how long will it be before they stop making queen cells ?
I thought things might settle, but found another today with an egg in and almost sealed, is this because the hive still has bees split from another hive that was also trying to swarm ?
In which case i guess its going to be another 2 weeks before they hopefully stop.

 

[David P]

Take anything i advise and check it first as i happily admit to being new to this.
We had a talk at our branch meeting the other day on swarming. The part that I think may be relevant to your predicament was he described a triangle in which the word swarm was written in the middle, on the three sides were the words Queen, Flying Bees and conditions.
The basic idea was without all three bees can not swarm.
Obviously your hive has a queen, its reasonable to assume its got flying bees so i would suggest that the conditions are still such that they want to swarm. Have they got enough space or is there anything else going on that would make their current residence less than desireable.

David

 

[grizzly]

Hi David
There is only brood on 4 frames, another 3 have stores, there is a super on which they have only just started to draw out, i think they have ample room at the moment.

The new queen was accepted, and has been laying very well, she also looks in good health.

I can only assume that because the brood is full of the bees still split from a swarming colony, that things wont change until her own daughters start to populate the hive.