polite request for advice

cannockcarrbees · May 26, 2012

been keeping bees for 1 year, managed to over winter a small caste swarm. , colony swarmed on april 30th we managed to get swarm and placed in nuc, 5 frame colony moved from nuc into brood box on may 21st brood stores and queen seen. then yesterday swarmed again have checked this am no site of queen . is there a possability of amalgamation of the two colonies as they both appear queenless now with 2 capped queen cups on the same frame, from the colony that swarmed and were in the nuc box for a month. it would be ideal to have a united colony from the 2 very small colonies we have now. temper of bees excellant calm and taking polllen in .any suuestions would be helpfull thanks sarah

enrico · May 26, 2012

Wow, a bit confusing Sarah to follow which box is which! But, I would leave any swarm min of 14 days to allow any virgin queen to mate and lay. They are Very difficult to see. Leave one queen cell to hatch and produce queen. I think you are trying to do too much too quickly. Wait until you have a laying queen before you consider uniting and also make sure you have no queen in the other hive before you put the together. Hope I understood your post correctly!

cannockcarrbees · May 26, 2012

enrico thank you for the reply first time on a forum not brillo at navigating thru whats required, understand about leaving the colony alone for 14 days and and let the girls do their thing, bees apppear busy taking pollen in.
to clarify, hive 1 swarmed onapril 30th from hive 1), we collected swarm and placed in a nuke, successfully managed to mark queen, and nuke developed nicely with brood ++++ so much so room limited on mon 21st may so we transferred nuke to brood box(hive 2) x5 frames of bees with good brood pattern queen seen plenty of stores. no evidence at all of queen cups.
so imagine our suprise to have swarm yesterday lunchtime 25th may both out at work daughter rang to say bees going bonkers, when got home swarm had gone. on hive inspection today hive one no evidence of of any brood, eggs larvae i think this colony is not queen right, but bees very passive and busy.
hive 2 which is a brood box with the transferred nuke colony in from 21st may, queen not seen but on the 3rd frame in 2 capped queen cells !!!! not there monday, (hence the swarm yesterday). We think we will leave the 2Q capped cells to sort themselves out and hopefully, hive 2 will become a stong colony with a new queen, hope we will be able to see her!!! thanks sarah

enrico · May 26, 2012

That helps thanks. Hive one needs a frame With eggs in from any hive. If they make these eggs into queen cells your are probably queen less. If they ignore them then she is there and waiting to get going after the swarm. Remember she had to emerge, be mated and start laying.... A good 21 days in perfect conditions.
Hive 2 I would remove one f the queen cells if you can, just to stop them 'casting' but if you can't then dot worry. This will take a while for her to get going so leave well alone.
At the end of the day if you get one queen right colony you can always unite them .
For future reference it helped me no end when you started numbering the colonies, you know what happened but I have to try and picture it......numbers help