I emailed Wally to ask his opinion
I have tried your Modified Snelgrove this summer.
I looked into the parent box 16 days after I had repatriated the queen.
You say there is no need to thin the QCs here and that the bees would sort it out. I don’t quite know what I expected to find. What I did find was 11 QCs open and more than 20 ready…which I sprung. What on earth would the bees have done if I had left it. Would they have swarmed themselves to nothing?
The short answer is that I do not really understand what has happened here. The parent colony that had made emergency queen cells following repatriation of the queen to the artificial swarm should a selected a queen and not swarmed - which it obviously has. Was the parent colony really crowded with bees during the 8-9 days before repatriation and afterwards when what were supposed to be emergency queen cells were being produced? If it had a lot of bees did it also have a super to provide extra space? If it was really crowded then I suppose it is possible (in theory) for them to decide to set up to swarm and make swarm cells instead of emergency cells.Were the cells mostly on the face of the frames, based on what was originally intended as worker brood, or were they in a more typical swarm cell position mostly along the bottom bars?
Over the years we have used the method this has never happened but that does not mean it can't. Basically I am clutching at straws. We have just repatriated queens in 2 colonies and they were very crowded (one had a super on it) and we are regretting not having changed the doors on the Snelgrove board after 3-4 days to bleed some bees down. We have done it now so the emergency queen cells will be made in a parent colony with enough bees to do a good job but not crammed with bees. We have 2 other repatriations scheduled for tomorrow which may be in a similar condition - we'll see.
Anyway, you have done exactly the right thing to rectify the situation by releasing virgin queens. I just hope you did not leave any non-emerged cells behind!
The colony was crowded but I did put an empty super on. I did a Modified Snelgrove so no way of bleeding bees with a board.
The cells were all on the face of the comb just where you would expect emergency cells to be.
And….yes all the QCs were dealt with, shaking every frame full of angry bees.
Oh well…it’s good to be reassured that I didn’t do anything terribly wrong, just bees not reading your pamphlet
