Split colony want to swarm again

[danro]

At the end of April I did an artificial swarm on one of my colonies.
It had been raising queen cups that we had been removing and the week before were some "proper" cells.
We thought we had cleared them all but when I visited there was a good big sealed queen cell.

I found the queen and moved her to an empty hive on the frame she was discovered on - less queen cells .
Undrawn frames were added to the empty hive and place in the position of the original hive.
The original hive was moved to one side and rotated 90 degs

Both colonies have been doing really well, filling the frames with brood.
Supers have been added to both hives and while there are beed up in the supers they have not really done much (one has drawn was on 4 frames in the super- the other is still undrawn)

BUT..... they are both making queen cups and cells like it is going out of fashion.

For the last two visits (every 7 days) we have been very surprised at how far they have got with queen raising.
Should they be artificiality swarmed again
Is this normal?
Am I doing something wrong?

Any advice greatly received.

cheers
Danny

 

[rae]

If they are making queen cells (real queen cells with larvae), not cups, not cups with eggs, they yes, they are going to swarm. Another round of AS beckons.

Swarm season seemed to be very early this year. Our artificially swarmed colonies are now huge - full 14x12 boxes of brood, and hives rammed with bees. We are watching them very closely, they must be about to go for a second attempt. They have a lot of uncapped nectar, one hive is now on 4 supers, as 3 are "full but uncapped".

 

[Hebeegeebee]

Are these carniolans?

 

[danro]

Oh dear.

Looks like we will have to buy\make some more kit then..
We expected to have 2 colonies with kit to AS them ..
a second round will be more than we had bargained for..

and sadly they do not seem interested in filling the supers..

 

[danro]

I'm sorry, how would I know?

They were a swarm 2 years ago that was given to me by the Association Swarm Collector. So they are pretty much "unknown origin"

Are these carniolans?

...and why?

 

[rae]

Are these carniolans?

They were a carni cross when I got them, the current hives are 3rd generation, so significantly mongrel. I don't think mine are especially swarmy, they are just very prolific, and I don't trust such a full hive to behave itself...