Swarming advice

[DaveG23]

Hi All,

At the end of May we took in x 2 overwintered nucs and have set them up in National brood boxes and fed them. Both brood boxes now have additional frames of foundation Lets call them hive 1 and hive 2.

Hive 1 had 2 frames of stores and 3 of brood, the sixth frame of foundation in the Nuc was half drawn on one side when we transferred them in to the national. Hive 2 was using all six frames.

We fed them for the second time about 3 weeks after we received them and noticed that Hive 1 hadn't really done much in the way of drawing out the new frames of foundation. Hive 2 seemed much more active in this regard. (we didn't do much in the way of a proper inspection, I am the newbie and my father in law who has kept bees for 30 years prefers to be cautious about too much disruption to the bees).

So I was away this weekend and my Father in Law noticed that Hive 1 tried to swarm, the queen being clipped, hadn't got very far and he picked her up and let her re-enter the hive, the flying bees also re-entered the hive.

So should we split Hive 1 now to perform an artificial swarm? I imagine they will either keep trying to swarm or may even kill the queen if they are raising new queens?

 

[Millet]

If the clipped Queen has reentered the hive the emerging virgin will more than likely kill the old Queen, i have quickly ran out of equipment at the moment so i just kept going through the hives with clipped Queens knocking all but one Queen cell down, all three of my 2017 Queens have vanished and replaced with a virgin and as far as i am aware only one hive sent a small swarm out which i caught and i now have another nuc with a laying Queen in it..

 

[DaveG23]

So we could just leave things to run there course, check for a virgin queen and check later to see if she is laying?

 

[Millet]

If i had plenty of spare kit i would have rather done artificial swarms and kept the 2017 Queens, it has worked out ok for me the way i have done things this year but you may not be so lucky, if your clipped Queen is still alive and you have sealed Queen cells in the hive you will be better of doing a artificial swarm of your choice.

 

[Erichalfbee]

So we could just leave things to run there course, check for a virgin queen and check later to see if she is laying?

No
Split them

 

[Hebeegeebee]

By clipping the queens wing(s) you have prevented the loss of the bees however you cannot (should not) just leave them and hope. Check over the colony - decide what to do with your father in law. A split makes sense - although with a small colony that has swarmed, you will probably need to unite them later in the year with a new queen.

 

[DaveG23]

Thanks for the advice, I will make a plan to split them ASAP.

You can guess what happened to Hive 2 today.. My Father in law saw a small swarm of bees emerge and settle on a bush. He had a brood box prepared underneath them, but when he came back about an hour later there was no sign of them. So I went over to his house as soon as I had heard this.

We assume that they have returned to the hive, we could find no sign of the queen on the ground. When we inspected them we found a few sealed queen cells, I could also hear piping. I wonder if that was the original queen? we couldn't find the queen visually.

We also inspected Hive 1, again we couldn't see the queen, and again we found several sealed queen cells.

So I have sent the father in law off to buy some new brood boxes, I am back at work and will now have to make a plan on how to split these two hives. Any thoughts on the best method especially as we haven't been able to see the queen in either hive, but have heard a queen in hive 2.

An interesting few days, I have an old hive set up in my garden (not where we keep the other hives), When I arrived home last night I discovered a swarm (either a cast, or from a small hive) had moved in. So its clearly the fashionable time to swarm in this part of the world.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

There's a good chance that you have lost the queens; piping is possibly the virgins talking to each other "'m going to get you"
Piping means that they are close to emerging.
You should be able to open a piping queen and let her out. If you do, then you can open the other queecells. With no sealed queencells, the colony will not swarm but the queens will sort themselves out. (Thanks to Ted Hooper for that one). You might like to make a nuc with a queencell as an insurance policy against one of the virgins in the hive not making it.

 

[DaveG23]

Well the latest update is that Hive 2 have now swarmed and the queen is with them, sitting at the base of a tree about 5m away from their hive.

I wonder what was happening with them earlier today, e.g. maybe they tried to swarm and the Queen didnt get out?

At any rate that makes what to do with that hive a bit simpler, they can be re-homed and moved to my garden for the time being. Then some management to try to deal with cast swarming in the original hive.


Hive 1 I will try to split tonight

 

[DaveG23]

ps I should add that its the marked queen that is with the swarm

 

[Erichalfbee]

Queens are not the only bees that pipe.
Foragers pipe swarms out as well.

 

[Millet]

Queens are not the only bees that pipe.
Foragers pipe swarms out as well.

I have witnessed workers doing it for the first time this year.

 

[Erichalfbee]

I have witnessed workers doing it for the first time this year.

It’s a wonderful thing to see and hear even if it’s your own bees

 

[DaveG23]

So my father in law called and the 2nd attempt at a swarm from hive 2 had disappeared, and it turns out he hadn't seen the queen.

So back to square 1, I will plan on the assumption that both hives may still have their original Queens or both may be queen less, waiting for a virgin to emerge. Any suggestions or recommendations?

 

[Millet]

It’s a wonderful thing to see and hear even if it’s your own bees

I agree and it is even more wonderful when you hear it and look for where it is coming from only to see a Virgin appear and head into the sky like a rocket..

 

[Millet]

So my father in law called and the 2nd attempt at a swarm from hive 2 had disappeared, and it turns out he hadn't seen the queen.

So back to square 1, I will plan on the assumption that both hives may still have their original Queens or both may be queen less, waiting for a virgin to emerge. Any suggestions or recommendations?

Do you not have anyone near by that knows what they are doing, you need help .

 

[DaveG23]

So we spent monday night making sure we had enough equipment to make splits (if needed) and deciding how to handle the situation.

As we were not entirely sure if the queens had gone we wanted to be prepared to capture the old queens if required.

The basic plan was to re-inspect, remove old queens and split them, knock down most of the queen cells etc.

We called a friend of my father in laws who has been teaching at the course I attended, so he came out to help.

During the inspection on Tuesday we found that hive 1 had 2 emerged queen cells which were still capped on Monday. Hive 2 dint have any emerged Queen cells, just capped. No sign of the original queens in either hive.

We ended up making a nuc box from each hive with two queen cells, in each Nuc we put in a frame of brood and nurse bees, shook in another frame of bees and gave frames of stores. Those 2 nucs will be for insurance queens if required, I moved the Nucs to my garden.

The 2 hives were left in original positions with 2 queen cells each.

 

[masterBK]

Why leave them with two cells ?

 

[DaveG23]

Why leave them with two cells ?

On the advice of the guy from the bee keeping association.

I had looked in to it a bit and despite reading lots of conflicting advice on this, I would have just gone with one, as I had read that this might reduce the chance of a cast swarm in the two hives.

Is there a correct number to leave or is this one of those things with different view points as to what works best?

And would that number change when considering the original hives versus the 2 nucs?

 

[Millet]

On the advice of the guy from the bee keeping association.

I had looked in to it a bit and despite reading lots of conflicting advice on this, I would have just gone with one, as I had read that this might reduce the chance of a cast swarm in the two hives.

Is there a correct number to leave or is this one of those things with different view points as to what works best?

And would that number change when considering the original hives versus the 2 nucs?

I left two Queen cells one year however the second one was by mistake as i did not spot it, my intention was too leave one, anyway half of the bees swarmed with the virgin and gathered on a fence not far away, by the time i got there they had gone, so basically i lost half of a colony that had two Queen cells.