I just caught my first swarm three weeks ago. After the first week I did an inspection and found that the bees had not drawn any comb. I inspected the hive the second week to find the same so I decided to add a frame of drawn comb from another hive.
Today when I inspected the hive there were 4 queen cells, drone cells and capped brood. I cannot locate the queen, but I guess she must be there.
Should I be concern that there are Queen Cells or is that normal? Also they didn’t draw any additional comb so I added another frame of drawn comb.
Hi Andrew, that sounds unusual to me. What I would do is break the queen cells down & give the colony a frame of open brood, just to see if the colony is queenless, or not. My thinking is that you may have a laying worker. If you have capped worker brood, that will indicate the presence of a queen. So therefore you’ll need to decide whether to continue with her, or replace her.
Just thinking, how strong is the colony? A strong colony should be pumping out wax flakes like mad, prettywell straight away.
Also your colony, if small, might need boosting with nurse bees, or a full frame of emerging brood, or both.
My guess would be that the swarm you caught lost its queen when or soon after you hived them. I would have thought they would still make comb but queenless bees do become a bit disorganized.
When you gave them the frame of brood, they began making queen cells - that means there wasn’t a queen there, or something was wrong with her. How far advanced are the cells? I would leave the hive alone for about 3 weeks to give them a chance to raise the new queen.
Hi Jeff, I agree with adding another frame with brood and nurse bees. Sorry if I’m missing something, but I’m confused about why you’d suspect laying workers and at the same time break down queen cells
Hi Eva I often see queenless colonies that have laying workers produce queen cells that basically are non viable. I don’t know why they do that. They are normally long & parallel. At least by breaking the queen cells down, it buys more time. Plus Andrew probably doesn’t want the colony to swarm anyway. My thinking is that because the colony, if queenless is trying to produce queens, then they will likely build emergency queens with open young brood, or eggs, because sometimes it’s hard to get a queenless colony to produce emergency queens, unless we keep giving them a new frame every week or so, until they eventually do.
Very interesting! I didn’t know that. I also checked Andrew’s original post to make sure of what I thought I’d read, and he did add a frame of drawn comb after the first week - but he didn’t say if it had eggs and young larvae in it. @Donnellana was this the case?
I read the same, so therefore I assumed it was just a frame of drawn comb. Hey @Donnellana , if that frame you provided did contain brood with worker eggs, etc., don’t break the QCs down. They could be emergency queens, which is what you may want. Send us a photo of the cells. It’s easy to tell emergency queens by looking at them.
The frame I gave them had no brood and I didn’t see any eggs just honey started to be stored at the very top of the frame. I’ll add a frame off brood and see how it goes but I was thinking a purchasing a new queen as I live in LA and we have Africanised honey bees here.
Another thing that I noticed is the bees are very docile and never seem to be bothered by me. I was concerned that being a wild swarm they could be more aggressive being where I’m located. They are also bringing a lot of nectar and pollen back.
The swarm is not strong, I would estimate is currently 2- 3lbs (just over a kilo)
I’ll take a pic later in the day and post.
This is my second year of keeping bees, the first year was not a successful year as I lost my hive to robber bees but I also learned so much. I have three hives now and it’s amazing how different each hive is.
They look like emergency queen cells to me, because they are built from within brood. There must have been eggs beneath the honey arc in that frame, especially if you took it out of a brood box. I can’t think of any other explanation.
You just need to work out a plan on account of the possibility of Africanized drones. At least you know now that the colony should accept a new queen, if you were to purchase one.
Update - I purchased a new queen a few weeks back and she has been accepted by the colony. I also added a frame of drawn comb and a frame of capped, uncapped brood along with larvae and eggs. Yesterday I inspected the hive and it’s doing ok, the capped brood has started to emerge. They workers are collecting a lot of nectar and pollen and have capped more honey but they are still not drawing any new comb. I’m going to keep on adding drawn comb from my strong hive and also may add another frame of brood to booster numbers. I am very impress with how calm they are.
I often see queenless colonies that have laying workers produce queen cells that basically are non viable. I don’t know why they do that. They are normally long & parallel. At least by breaking the queen cells down, it buys more time. Plus Andrew probably doesn’t want the colony to swarm anyway. My thinking is that because the colony, if queenless is trying to produce queens, then they will likely build emergency queens with open young brood, or eggs, because sometimes it’s hard to get a queenless colony to produce emergency queens, unless we keep giving them a new frame every week or so, until they eventually do.
