Hi Jeff,
How do I prevent them from swarming?
Michael Smart,
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
Hi Mike, it’s all about removing the colony’s urge to swarm by a number of strategies. For starters now you need to remove any swarm cells while splitting. Then keep doing that & opening the brood up until the urge has passed.
If I find that a colony has already started swarm preparations, I’ll remove every brood frame bar one, the one with the youngest larvae. I’ll place that in the center, flanked by fresh foundation, before closing the hive up. I’ll remove some bees, minus the queen with the brood frames to start a new hive. I’ll use some of the frames to bolster weaker colonies. I leave the one brood frame, with young larvae, just in case I accidentally kill the queen or take her with the split.
It’s necessary to do post split inspections, so as to make sure we know where the queen is, plus make sure the urge to swarm has passed.
Most times I split the split after the emergency cells are developed, so as to prevent it from swarming with the first virgin to emerge, because I like naturally selected queens above tearing queen cells down bar one.
Well it’s going to start raining so I will have to get in there tomorrow morning. Which may be beneficial that would mean it would be three full days and hopefully I will see them starting to build queen cells.
Question, should I add another frame or two of nurse bees not the frame just a bees since the old hive still has a lot of bees in it, and also in the flow super?
Hi Mike, yes that’s a good idea. You can add more than two on account that quite a few will return to the parent hive. I read that bees do orientation flights from as early as 3 days old to 14 days old. So therefore we must bare in mind that a lot of nurse bees will return to the old hive if they have already done their orientation flights.
Were they queen cells or just cups? What does “cut” mean - like it was damaged when you opened the hive?
1st year queens like yours are not as likely to swarm as 2nd and 3rd year queens.
Bearding alone is not necessarily a sign of an impending swarm, maybe only that the hive is warm or crowded or both. Without other signs of swarm preparation, I think bearding is just bearding.
It seems like when the nectar flow is heavy, like it has been here recently, there are only the necessary bees inside the hive as I can see from the super window and a great number outside the entrance. However, if I am preparing to open and smoking the bees, a lot of them will run in and the hive will seem more crowded all of the sudden.
Certainly I trust the advice that @JeffH gives but it can be hard to offer the correct advice without seeing things in person. Dividing a string colony early in the year is likely to be successful, like @JeffH said so you did the safe thing if you’re trying to prevent swarming and increase your colonies.
Hi Chau06,
Thank you for your reply. I meant to say capped. There were other queen cells some longer than the others. There was one or two cells the looked like cups.
I am going to go back in both hives today if is warms up and try to find the queen. I will update everyone and post some pictures.
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Hi Mike, you don’t have to spot the queen, you just need to rule her in, or out in each colony, based on what you find. I forgot to mention that I break all the swarm cells down while doing the split. Then I let the split make emergency queens. Emergency queens will develop out of, & within brood. Whereas swarm cells will be slightly adjacent to the brood.
You’ll recognize emergency cells at the start, because the bees will start reconstructing worker cells into queen cells. I found this photo to illustrate what I’m talking about.
Hi Jeff,
I was able to get into my hives yesterday, I did see 4 uncapped queen cells with larvae inside of them and 4 capped queen cells all on the same frame in the old hive and didn’t notice any in the new split yet. To be honest, I felt bad about removing them so I just left them for now.
I added about 3 frames of nurse bees to the new split. I figured by this weekend it will have been 7 bays since I split the hive. At this point should I see queen cells in the new split?
Unfortunately, I still was unable to find the queen.
FYI, Don’t know if it make a difference but the old hive did swarm on me last year on June 5th. It was a great sight to see until I realize half of my bees just left, but they bounce back stronger than ever.
Thanks again for all of the help.
Did this split have eggs? Very possible your queen is in there.
After 7 days you’ll definitely see emergency queen cells, provided it is queenless & the split had resources to make them with. Resources being either fertile eggs or very young worker larvae.
After 7 days you should see young larvae if the queen is in the split.
If the queen is in the old hive, & you don’t want it to swarm, you must break all the swarm cells down.
I am nervous about breaking the queen cells in the old hive, because I have not been able to find the queen. When I go through it again, Saturday, I’ll keep looking until I find her.
Yeah well, queens can be hard to spot. That’s why I don’t look for them, unless I have to for some reason. Is there new eggs, or very young larvae?
I see you only have one hive, which makes it difficult when you need resources to draw from.
After a couple more days, you’ll know whether the split has the queen or it’s making emergency queens.
If you read my earlier post, you’ll see how I remove every brood frame bar one. The one with the open brood, that’s in case I remove or accidentally kill the queen. If that happens, the colony can make a new queen.
PS your query started 5 days ago. By the time Saturday arrives, if the colony was preparing to swarm 5 days ago, it’s likely that the colony could swarm before then. Anyway if it does, at least the bees in the split wont join them. Plus you might catch the swarm.
It’s very helpful comment.
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Something else to consider for these early season swarms is that the weather may not be conducive to mating flights once the queens emerge. I don’t have a lot of experience with queen mating but my reading suggests it should optimally be 26.5°C or warmer for success. As well as being dry and not too windy.
I’ve had a lot of experience with queens mating. My success rate would suggest that bees don’t let a minor detail like optimal temperature stop them from mating 
Maybe it’s just me, however I wouldn’t have thought that a swarm in the middle of spring would be considered to be an “early season swarm”, especially seeing as @Eva split a hive on the 23rd of Feb.
February 23 is a winter split! I wonder what @Eva did about a queen in that split.
Freezing temperatures tonight so definitely still cool in our part of the world. We usually wait until early may to plant tender annual plants.
Definitely a winter split in these parts! Not the norm for sure. I decided to go for it because the colony was so full and was making drones, as was the other overwintered one I posted about even earlier:
It was a gamble, but I figured there might be other drones around if I had them. I insulated and fed it through another cold spell. Temps are dropping after today but nothing below 45 at night/upper 50s during the day and there’s plenty of forage now - it’s going well!
So your queen mated ok I guess! My local beekeeper says that the early spring queens are usually weak so I’ll be interested to know how she works out!
Makes sense - checking on them as soon as the rain clears.
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What do you estimate the chances are that they will swarm in this situation? Might they tear down the queen cell if you split them adequately? Or might they kill the old or new queen once she emerges instead of splitting? Or do you think they’ll swarm no matter what if a new virgin emerges?