Hey all. Noob here. 1 topbar hive second season. Exploded this spring. Queen started laying a LOT of drones.inspected 10 days ago and verified queen present. There were 2 queen cups with no eggs. Inspected hive today. Queen is gone with a fair number of workers it would appear. There are new single eggs standing on end and various stages of larvae and capped brood. Nectar stores in central comb. but there is already a new queen hatched out and running around. There are also 7 other swarm cells and 1 queen cup with a brood.
Day old eggs and an already emerged queen seems odd to me. I thought the queen would take off with a swarm when the swarm cells were capped? But she couldn’t have if there were fresh eggs today.
I look forward to comments. Thanks.
If the colony is over crowded you have two options 1. Do a split of the colony or 2. increase the space in the hive to give the bees extra space and jobs for them to do. But from what I have understood I would go for option 1.
I have heard of a swarm leaving the hive without the queen being locked into the hive by a queen includer, stopping her leaving, but then the swarm returned to the hive, this happened for 3 days then everything settled down. I don’t know the full outcome of events.
Cheers