Swarm

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Tommo

New Bee
Joined
Apr 5, 2010
Messages
20
Reaction score
13
Location
Guernsey C.I.
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
20
I picked up a swarm about ten days ago and because I was going to move it on put it in a five frame Nuc it was fed sugar syrup and they seemed quite happy bringing in pollen etc.
I opened the Nuc yesterday and they seemed OK drawing out the new foundation quite calm I needed no smoke but what I was most surprised to find was seven queen cells I guess around three to four days old. They were surrounded by a few cells with larvae in them and looked to be predominantly drone cells and the new comb on this frame was displaying the uneveness of build typical of a drone layer colony
I couldn't find a queen and I could only think that these "Queen" cells would have been laid into by a worker and would produce some rather large drones.
Not wanting to take that chance I broke them down and gave the colony a frame of eggs and brood from another hive. I will check in a few days to see if they are doing anything with them.
In my forty plus years keeping bees I have never seen this before and would be interested in opinions.
 
Were there eggs? And were they normally positioned as a queen would lay?
Perhaps it's a swarm with a queen right at the end of laying life and they have gone for immediate supercedure.
 
I saw some brood but no eggs. So I suppose that could be a possibility.
In that situation though I would have expected them to supersede in their original hive and not swarm.
 

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