Hive inspection after relocating a swarm

Swarms & Bee Catching
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How long should you wait to do an inspection after capturing and rehousing a swarm?

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I would say 2-3 weeks. Others may differ… :wink:

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Hi Ken, I think of all the possible scenarios. I will always give a swarm a frame with open brood, making sure that includes worker eggs. I will check in about 5 days to see if a mated queen is laying yet. She will usually start laying on the frame of brood or frames adjacent to it. If the swarm is queenless, emergency queens will be underway in the brood frame. If no eggs or emergency queens, I’ll reckon there is a virgin queen, so therefore I’d look for eggs in about 7 more days. If no eggs then, I’ll give it another frame with BIAS.

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Thanks Jeff. I did put in a frame with a little bit brood and some bee bread just to entice them to stay. I’m sure I got the Queen because of the way they climbed into the nuc from the ground but she could easily be a virgin queen because the swarm came from a hive that swarmed 2 weeks previous and when I checked it after it swarmed the second time, there were 2 queen cells that had been chewed open by the emergents. I had culled all the queen cells and left 2. Time over, next time, I’ll leave just one.

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What’s BIAS ? I meant to ask and forgot.

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You’re welcome. Brood in all stages = BIAS. So when you break it down, you’re including new eggs, right up to emerging bees. I looked for such a frame this morning. The first one I pulled out was full of mostly sealed & emerging bees, with a nice amount of young larvae & eggs in between. I thought “that’ll do, all those emerging bees will really help the colony”.

It went into a colony with a new queen, that for some reason wasn’t laying. During inspection, I saw one worker on top of her, which looked like the start of a ball. I quickly squashed her & placed her on top of the frames, so that the colony will commence making emergency queens straight away. The colony will be strong enough to split, once all the queen cells are built.

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So much freely given knowledge. That’s the stuff of legends. Thank you.:pray:

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