Some guidance needed about uniting a swarm to hive please

[CliffDale]

Hi

I have a national hive and can only see sealed brood. There are a couple of opened queen cells and one sealed queen cell.

I think I caught the swarm in a bait hive but have not looked in, I dont want to disturb them too soon.

I would like to reunite the bait hive back to the national. Can I do this, I can not find virgin queens but there may be on inside the hive.

Could I unite and let the bees sort them selves out?

Or should I leave it a while to see if a queen mates and starts laying.

I'm after honey from this colony so I would like a strong hive again.

Any advice appreciated.

Cliff

 

[beesleybees]

firstly, you need to confirm the original or reciever hive is genuinly queenless. A test frame should be used

I would then place the swarm in a national super and place it ontop of the brood box seperated by newspaper. a queen excluder should then be used on top of the super containg the swarm

after a week or so, the bees will have eaten there way though the newspaper. I would leave them then for at least 3 weeks as the swarm maybe carrying a virgin queen

after hopefully suceesful mating and the queen begins to lay, you can then hopefully find the queen and move her to the brrod box if she isnt already there and laying

you could also just unite the swarm with the hive with a good spray of air freshner. if theres queen in both the swarm and the hive, they wil battle it out till one win but its risky as both could be injured and your back to square one

 

[Hebeegeebee]

Virgins are difficult to find; there may be one in the swarmed colony that might go (swarm again) if her sister is in a queencell now. The swarm will have a queen of some sort of course - either mated or not. You don't give dates about what's happened with the hive so it's difficult to give advice without that.

It might be worth removing all signs of queencells and uniting. If there are two queens, there won't be after uniting.
There won't be another swarm without queencells.