What did I do wrong - lost a swarm

[Wingy]

Ok thought I had this under control but they swarmed anyway. This is what I did.
Over wintered a 5 frame Langstroth nuc with 2017 buckfast Q.
Good spell of weather in April transferred to full BB, added 2 frames of foundation & insulated dummy boards. Build up was rapid and we're soon on full 10 frames. Even the later cold snap didn't seem to slow down their build up.
And once there was a good flow on I added a super which they got to work drawing out the foundation & filling it.
Sunday 6 May inspection found 11 play cups but couldn't see into them all. Took advise and on
Monday 7 May made up a nuc consisting of 3 x frames of BIAS & all 11 play cups, 1 x stores & 1 x foundation with young bees. I placed 4 x frames of foundation into the hive to give them some work to do,
Monday14 May they had drawn most of the frames and the Q was laying in them, but more play cups all clear so left it.
Monday 21 May play cups still there but now 2 x charged Q cells still plenty of BIAS including eggs. Moved 3 x frames with BIAS play cups & charged Q cells into a nuc and added 2 x foundation. Filled hive with 3 more foundation.
This is now all 2018 frames and clean tidy easy to inspect. I didn't miss a Q cell however on Sunday 26 May 1 x capped QC right in the middle of a frame and the Q has gone with 1/2 of the workforce

Question as per title what did I do wrong & should I inspect more than weekly?

 

[roche]

How much drone brood did you have all the way through?

 

[MerryBee]

You say you couldnt have missed a queen cell, but we have all done it. If you had a sealed QC 5 days later you must have missed it, and they swarmed and half your bees are gone.

If you clip your queens you will lose the queen if they try to swarm but the bees will return to the hive.

You also need a better method of swarm control. You cannot simply rely on giving them more space and hoping that will do the trick. I am sure others will be along shortly with advice on a good methods of swarm control

 

[Wingy]

How much drone brood did you have all the way through?

Lots of drone brood. 3 of the frames in the over wintered nuc were super frames, the bees had extended them to full brood size all drone brood. I've had lots of drones about for weeks

 

[Wingy]

You say you couldnt have missed a queen cell, but we have all done it. If you had a sealed QC 5 days later you must have missed it, and they swarmed and half your bees are gone.

If you clip your queens you will lose the queen if they try to swarm but the bees will return to the hive.

You also need a better method of swarm control. You cannot simply rely on giving them more space and hoping that will do the trick. I am sure others will be along shortly with advice on a good methods of swarm control

Where the capped Q cell was it was right in the middle of a frame so positive I didn't miss it. Looked to have been done around an already egg or young larvae, as if emergency QC

 

[roche]

Drones are pretty much a signal of intent. We tend to do an A/S in April/May as soon as there is much of a showing of drone brood.

 

[user 6228]

Been here done this got the T-shirt.

As a beginner, the intricacies of doing swarm control are a bullet that has to be bit.
Two goals have to be hit in what ever method you chose.
1)You need to convince the bees that would swarm that they have swarmed.
2) and you need to control the process and/or the number of queens that emerge from Q cells.

Number 1 usually means going through an procedure with the existing queen and half the bees that mimic features of swarming to some extent. This normally means being able to reliably find the queen, something which can be a challenge to beginners.

 

[Uncle Betty]

Build up was rapid and we're soon on full 10 frames. Even the later cold snap didn't seem to slow down their build up.And once there was a good flow on I added a super

Super for bees, as they say.

In waiting for the flow, and they being already on ten frames, possibly you supered a bit late ?

As a contributory factor.

 

[Beefriendly]

Where the capped Q cell was it was right in the middle of a frame so positive I didn't miss it.

Likely to be the other one(s) you did miss that caused the problem. They will continue to throw up queen cells as they can. One inspection is never enough...unless done at least 7 -8 days after the queen has stopped laying..... and even then they will find eggs/larvae that were chilled and slower to develop or they also try raising them for 4-5 day old larva....you can't tell just by looking. It's a war of attrition.
And they can hide them in the most unlikely places........

 

[beeno]

Hi Wingy, I tend to lean towards your own possible conclusion. Whether you destroy or physically remove their QCs probably does not matter to the bees they go into emergency cell production. That's why you did not miss it and they swarmed on day 5 having built the emergency queen cell from a one day old larva. Unusual that there was only one, but they only built two primary cells in the first place!

 

[thibault]

Charged queen cells is red alarm even if you still see eggs, queen being big... as soon as you see those charged queen cells, do a Wally shaw modified snelgrove, removing frames and addding empty ones is not enough when they have charged queen cups, their mind is done, they wont stop trying to swarm (I learned it the hard way, lost a swarm as well this year)
On big colonies bulding up fast and especially if I start to see playcups, I inspect every 5 days. It goes very fast, when you see queen cup with larvae and royal jelly in, maximum 5 days after the 1st swarm is gone, if not earlier depending on the age of the larvae. My humble contribution as I am a beginner.

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[Wingy]

Hi Wingy, I tend to lean towards your own possible conclusion. Whether you destroy or physically remove their QCs probably does not matter to the bees they go into emergency cell production. That's why you did not miss it and they swarmed on day 5 having built the emergency queen cell from a one day old larva. Unusual that there was only one, but they only built two primary cells in the first place!

That makes sense and fits in with my observations - thought weekly inspection was enough but obviously not. Lesson learned the hard way
Thanks

 

[Beefriendly]

they wont stop trying to swarm (I learned it the hard way, lost a swarm as well this year)

You might wish to specify the type of bees you keep here.
I find with young isolated mated Buckfast queens that knock 'em down and give more laying room works around 70% of the time. I don't recommend this method for other strains of bees.

 

[beeno]

That makes sense and fits in with my observations - thought weekly inspection was enough but obviously not. Lesson learned the hard way
Thanks

Weekly inspection is enough provided you don't 'mess around' with their QCs. If you do then you have to check in four days time and do AS if they are still at it!

 

[thibault]

You might wish to specify the type of bees you keep here.
I find with young isolated mated Buckfast queens that knock 'em down and give more laying room works around 70% of the time. I don't recommend this method for other strains of bees.

[emoji106], Amm

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[Beefriendly]

[emoji106], Amm

Explains a lot

 

[Beefriendly]

Weekly inspection is enough!

I'm going to be a little controversial here but inspections spaced 7 days apart are too far apart. You can go from a 3 day old egg to a 2 day old sealed queen cell in 7 days, By which time your original queen has probably already swarmed.

 

[thibault]

Explains a lot

Lool, indeed it was not just myths [emoji23]

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[beeno]

Well, if we are talking primary cells i.e. swarm cells or supersedure cells and you have checked all queen cups for eggs and they are empty, then seven days is plenty of time. The problem arises if you tear down or take away their started queen cells as they will then produce secondary cells i.e. emergency cells. Having a choice I have found in my limited experience, that the bees use a one day old larvae if available and swarm in five days. I do not believe that they move eggs into a primary cells as there would be no need for emergency cells in that case. These time lines have worked perfectly well for me and I am sticking to them!

 

[Walrus]

My thoughts on this are:

Build up was rapid and we're soon on full 10 frames. Even the later cold snap didn't seem to slow down their build up.
And once there was a good flow on I added a super which they got to work drawing out the foundation & filling it.

A prolific queen does well in double brood box so maybe that was the way to go. I often use double brood langstroths then QX and supers above that. Easy to check for QCs by looking at the bottom of the frames of the top brood box.

Sunday 6 May inspection found 11 play cups but couldn't see into them all.

Play cups don't mean anything much so I don't think any action is needed just because they are in the hive. You do need to see that there is no larva in though, which would make it a queen cell.

Took advise and on Monday 7 May made up a nuc consisting of 3 x frames of BIAS & all 11 play cups, 1 x stores & 1 x foundation with young bees. I placed 4 x frames of foundation into the hive to give them some work to do

You removed resources, presumably to weaken it and put them off swarming, but left the queen. It could have worked - nothing is ever 100% - but removing the queen means they can't leave until a virgin has emerged, and they might decide to stay put in that scenario.

Monday14 May they had drawn most of the frames and the Q was laying in them, but more play cups all clear so left it.
Monday 21 May play cups still there but now 2 x charged Q cells still plenty of BIAS including eggs. Moved 3 x frames with BIAS play cups & charged Q cells into a nuc and added 2 x foundation. Filled hive with 3 more foundation.

Now they definitely want to swarm and you did the same thing as before, which didn't work before i.e. removed resources and left the queen. Some kind of artificial swarm or removal of nuc or shook swarm with the queen was needed here. If the bees want to swarm they will swarm, so you need to control the process. When they swarm the queen leaves, so by keeping the queen in the hive they knew that they still needed to swarm.

This is now all 2018 frames and clean tidy easy to inspect. I didn't miss a Q cell however on Sunday 26 May 1 x capped QC right in the middle of a frame and the Q has gone with 1/2 of the workforce

If you didn't miss a QC they still had time to turn a 12 hour larva into a capped QC and bugger off with the queen. They were clearly desperate to go. But if you had removed the queen they couldn't have

I hope that helps?.