Swarming advice

[Erichalfbee]

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?

The idea behind two cells is as insurance should one fail
You have that insurance in the nucs in the garden. So you leave one cell

 

[drex]

Earlier this year I left two cells side by side, as they would have been difficult to separate. Hence probably the same age. One developed the purple tip, so I released a healthy virgin. The other contained a dead pupa.

 

[Millet]

Earlier this year I left two cells side by side, as they would have been difficult to separate. Hence probably the same age. One developed the purple tip, so I released a healthy virgin. The other contained a dead pupa.

It is a gamble imo .

 

[drex]

It is a gamble imo .

I know. I would normally leave one, but these cells were so close together I did not want to risk damaging the cell I wanted to leave. In this case it was a good job.

 

[DaveG23]

So with my two original hives having x 2 queen cells each there is a risk of a swarm.

We also put x 2 queen cells in the Nucs, am I right in thinking that they are less likely to swarm because they dont have the flying bees and because they have been moved to a new location (3 miles away)?

Another thing that just struck me; these colonies came from x 2 overwintered nucs we got them in May this year, the queens were marked with blue. So there is a chance that they were from 2015 (if I have understood the annual colour coding), I would have thought that I should have been getting queens from last year.. Unless blue was the only colour to hand..

 

[Erichalfbee]

Yes
Yes you are right.
No idea, all my queens are white.

 

[DaveG23]

Last night I went to listen to the x 2 nucs in the garden, in one I think I could hear a queen piping, it was quite short periods of noise but certainly sounded like all the examples I have heard before.