Last week I received a call to catch a swarm but before I got there, it had returned to the hive (the owner saw it).
I inspected the hive that afternoon, found the queen and multiple queen cells, and made a split. I left the original queen with the parent hive and took all frames that I found queen cells on (doing my absolute best to find them all).
However, they swarmed again 3 days later but they also returned to the hive shortly after, again.
My thinking is that I could have accidentally missed a queen cell that didn’t cut the life support for swarming. But I’m so stuck on why the swarm returned, and twice. And is the returning swarms linked to the second swarm (post-split)?
What is the general understanding for why swarms return? Is it because the queen chooses not to leave or is unable to (e.g. injured)? I took a good look at her when I found her but didn’t see anything abnormal.
I’m not sure what’s going on in order to understand what the next best step is. I’m considering inspecting the hive again for more information but I really don’t want to disrupt them again. I haven’t heard that they’ve swarmed again.
Hi Bianca, as far as I know, I was told by my first mentor that bees do “a practice swarm”. I’m not sure if every swarm does a practice swarm before the fair dinkum swarm or not.
I know it happened in my yard once, so because I had heard of it, I went straight in & removed the virgin queen (out of a nuc making a new queen), while splitting the colony in half, and leaving only one queen cell in place for the remaining half.
Anyway I got two queens out of it, while I only expected one.
Hi Bianca, that’s correct. I don’t normally break down every queen cell bar one, because I like the idea of producing a naturally selected queen. However during a strong swarm season, even a reasonable size nuc can issue a swarm, as I found out. Therefore I’m reducing my nucs to only 2-3 frames after the queen cells are developed.
For example: I had a really strong nuc made up of 8 full frames of brood with bees out of 2 or 3 hives on the 10th, so yesterday the 16th, after the queen cells had developed, I split it 4 ways. Even with doing that I donated a couple of frames worth of nurse bees to other colonies, via a board next to the entrances, that’s how many bees had emerged over the past 6 days. I took 3 of the splits to a different location, leaving the original one in place. I had to add frames with honey to each split, on account that the brood frames were basically 100% brood.
I caught up with everything for the time being late yesterday. Today’s a lazy day of pottering around. I accumulated nearly a 10 litre bucket full of QX wax scrapings since the 1st, I’m melting that down with other wax.
Yesterday afternoon as I was working out in my yard one of my colonies swarmed.
They landed about 10 feet up in an evergreen tree. By the time I went and got a ladder and a box to collect them they left again and returned to the parent hive.
I opened up the hive and found numerous capped and uncapped queen cells both along the bottom edge and mid-frame. I was unable to find a queen.
I took four frames and one drawn empty frame and put them in a new box making (pretty sure) sure there was only one capped queen cell. I took down all but one nice capped cell in the parent hive.
I closed everything up and plan to check again in a couple weeks. I suspect that the (old) queen is in the split because of the way they were fanning and how few bees seemed to be leaving to go to the parent hive.
Anyway, any thoughts or suggestions about what I did or the timing of a recheck?
Nice job catching your own swarm I missed one last week, it landed way too high up to capture. Racked my brain trying to work out how to rig a frame of open brood up close to it, but couldn’t see it working.
If you can add a frame of open brood from another hive to the box that will help hold them. This has worked for me in the past.
I guess I slacked off in my swarm prevention efforts this year - just now my son texted me that there’s another one! This time it’s nice and low in one of my apple trees
I actually didn’t catch them - they returned and then I immediately split the hive. My question was about not being able to find the queen and the number of queen cells…
Hi Alok, you replied to my message. Was the question directed to me? If so, I’d suggest you read everything I said in @Mike-s 's previous topic. Otherwise I’d be just repeating myself.
That swarm was a practice swarm. The real swarm is imminent.
I missed one last week, it landed way too high up to capture. Racked my brain trying to work out how to rig a frame of open brood up close to it, but couldn’t see it working.