About to swarm?

Can I be both…lol. I have them to be self sufficient with my family and my own sweet tooth. We eat 2 kg of honey a week. I also have them for teaching my family about life and the life of bees, I think bees are amazing.

I’d hate to lose all my bees, so I guess it is best I get over my (“sorry girls for messing with your home”) worries and get a few hives for back up of a swarm and die off.

With wanting to only keep 3 hives, is it best to just remove all queen cells and not split? What are your thoughts.

Never remove queen cells. It is the most effective way to make them queenless. If that is no your goal, then don’t remove them. If you have CAPPED queen cells they most likely swarmed yesterday and most likely don’t have any larvae young enough to make a new queen.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfallacies.htm#queencells

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@Michael_Bush I find I can tell by the strength of the colony whether the hive has swarmed or not. I remove all the queen cells, the frames with the most sealed brood & replace them with fresh frames of foundation in a checkerboard fashion. Sometimes I’ll replace them with foundationless frames, that will almost certainly stop them from continuing to swarm. It’s always best to do another check in a weeks time. The advantages of doing this type of swarm control is: You have the frames of sealed brood to add to new colonies & the hive continues to produce honey. Sometimes I’ll remove the frames of brood, bees included, minus the queen to start a new colony.

Your welcome Amelia, if your coming my way, pick a nice day, bring your bee suit & write down any questions beforehand. cheers. PS, you’ve got some nice cherry tomatoes growing there, also some sort of gourd?

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Hi Amelia, I might be a bit late to the party here, but my bees are looking exactly the same as yours. Some good advice from Jeff and Michael. Open your entrance up and keep an eye out for swarm cells but if this is the first season, then the chances of your bees swarming are pretty low as they will be busy building comb and raising young.

I really need to don’t I.

Hi, Give us a ring if you want to do something. I have quite a few hives around the side making new queens for customers plus my observation hive is going strong currently making some nice straight worker comb for a blokes warre hive for when his queen & colony are ready to go in. So there’s plenty to see & learn from.

I opened the hive today to check on the brood. My first frame was full of honey.


The remaining looked allot like this next photo. Are these normal worker cells? There is a larger capped cell on the bottom left. Is this a drone or Queen cell?

WHAT IS THIS??? But then I found this… I found a cell about an inch from the top. It was open. …Is it a Queen cell in the making, swarm cell, supercedure cell or drone cell?.
I first thought it was just a drone cell. By the 2nd last frame, there was some fatter smooth closed cells hanging off the bottom in a cluster of 5 or so. Smooth not like a big peanut shell from what I was taught is a queen cell.
Then my camera ran out of battery. The final frame I found my young QUEEN. Same Queen I bought in May as I marked her.
So I am wondering do I split this hive, or maybe change over the honey filled frames with fresh frames?
I enjoy reading your feedback my friends. Thank you.

Hi @Rodderick. Every hive here on the Sunshine Coast, if left unchecked will swarm during spring, regardless of the age of the queen. I came to that conclusion quite a few years ago. The abundance of pollen & honey around here sees to that. The bees around here don’t follow the normal rules of beekeeping. A bloke got a colony off me last year, he’s the pastor of Wilma’s church. When I noticed my own bees getting ready to swarm, just over half way through winter, I got Wilma to warn him. I don’t think he wanted to get into the brood through fear of killing the queen. Sure enough, it swarmed, luckily he caught it. However he lost a secondary swarm or two, leaving the hive vulnerable to shb damage. I don’t know what the final outcome was. Anyway he got the huge primary swarm.

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Queen Cells Look more like a peanut shell

But these are probably Supercedure as the are in the centre of the frame. Usually from eggs less than 3 days old


Play Cup


Queen Cell

Swarm Cells are generally not in the main Brood area but off to the bottom or side
Supercedure cells are not where the Queen will generally come across them

As a general rule of thumb

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Thank you Valli, perfect images for me.

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I am thinking of taking out the 2 full honey outer frames and replacing them on my next (in 7 days) hive check. If there is a queen cell, I will split the hive.

So much to learn, and am enjoying it.
Thank you all.

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