After spotting what looked like several emergency queen cells this past Monday I did a full inspection last night, determined the situation and made some decisions.
Let me go back in time and outline the events leading up to last night.
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Saturday, May 21st: I did a cursory inspection on my Flow Hive by removing the Flow Super and tipping the top brood box up.
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May 21st: Observed a few uncapped swarm cells containing larvae and royal jelly. I opened the hive, quickly inspected and (unnecessarily) culled several of the swarm cells.
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May 21-24th: Started gathering equipment for a split and/or swarm trap: 10-frame deep brood box, bottom board, inner cover, lid, nuc box and 20 deep frames - 10 waxed plastic foundation, 10 wax foundation.
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Wednesday, May 25th: I did a full inspection, found additional swarm cells I’d missed or that were new and very few eggs (kinda honey bound). Did not see the queen.
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May 25th. Made a split into the 5-frame nuc with eggs, larvae, swarm cells and capped brood. The split consisted of 3 drawn frames covered with bees and I shook an additional frame of bees into the nuc. I ensured the queen was not on those frames.
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Monday, May 30th: Inspected the nuc, found new drawn and capped queen cells in upper portions of frames.
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May 30th: Inspected Flow Hive to ensure no new swarm cells were being created and the urge to swarm had been eliminated.
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May, 30th: Found multiple emergency queen cells throughout the hive. Some open, some capped. No eggs present. My immediate suspicion was the hive was not queen right. Mulled next steps.
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Wednesday, June 1st: Made determination to take some advantage of all the queens being developed (over 20). Moved the new 10-frame hive I’d obtained the week before to the apiary and performed another split. 5 frames of capped brood, food and queen cells were transferred into the new hive and entrance reduce put in place.
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June, 1st: Culled all but the largest 4 queen cells from the parent colony and all but the 4 largest from the split. Delicately removed 2 to which were given to a neighboring beek to try and raise. This proved difficult as I use plastic foundation.
So here I am - 75 days after hiving 2, 3-frame nucleus colonies with this:
Doing the bee math, I dropped or rolled my queen on the day that I did my initial swarm-prevention split.
Yes, that is unfortunate and I wish it hadn’t happened but on the bright side, I’ve gone through a bit of a trial by fire and learned a lot.
Another plus is that IF the new queens mature and return from mating flights successfully, I’ll have expanded my apiary to 3 full-sized hives with a nuc to pull brood from to supplement their growth.
So, no bothering those bees for roughly 3 weeks when it will be time to check and see if the hives have laying queens or not. If not I can do one of two things, take eggs from the remaining queen-right hive and try again or purchase 3 new queens. I’ll likely purchase.
