We had a very healthy colony after winter so we did a split. Original hive had a medium and deep box. We put the queen in the new box. I thought five new frames and reduced pop would prevent swarming!
We had 2 swarms yesterday and did an inspection. I heard piping about 10 days ago and thought we would be ok and queen right in the original hive but was avoiding going in and causing a distrubance.. I am not 100% sure how to manage our hives as this is coming up to our first year anniversary and first swarm season.
We inspected both hives yesterday after the second swarm. The population seemed solid in both. While we may or may not have a virgin queen, we pinched off about 5 queen cells and left three. One had been chewed out, so quess there is or was a queen at sometime. Now there is a third swarm! I am giving them away as we don’t want a third hive. I was hoping reducing queen cells would stop swarming and still left a few if we need a new queen.
Another note, I live near the woods, last year, hive swarmed while we were on vacation, and neighbor had a hive he neglected.
Could these be swarms of wild bees that left last year?
Should we do another inspection tomorrow to see if these are from our original hive?
Is our honey season wrecked? Was hoping to add flow frames on a couple of weeks.
Hi Metsker. I have a couple of tips & answers:
Tip #1 Instead of leaving 3 queen cells to reduce the risk of swarming, leave only one. I have a different strategy- Available on request.
Tip #2 Keep the swarms to use as resource hives. Don’t give them away.
Tip #3 Learn time lines of swarming, queens mating, laying etc.
Q#1 They could be swarms from wild hives, or they could be from your hives.
Q#2 Definitely do brood inspections of the original hive.
Q#3 Your honey season wont necessarily be wrecked. Your season has only started. You have time to manipulate your colonies so that you will get a good honey flow.
Afterthought: During swarm season, focus more on swarm prevention than honey production. The honey production will come later. I see the odd new beekeepers use the term “spring honey flow”, which I think is a mistake.
Hi, thank you for replying. Your strategy is welcome! Leary of only 1 queen cell as we ended up queenless last year after a “more knowledgeable” friend pinched off all cells thinking it would avert a swarm. Wrong! That was a challenging time. Is not the new queen supposed to destroy remaining cells? Guess that didn’t happen this week.
We have a long dearth in summer, flow is about six weeks in spring, then again in fall. Mentor suggests taking a frame of brood from queenright hive to bump population in swarming hive to ensure better honey production. Interesting idea, though split hive isn’t building out wax foundation yet and has/had smaller population.
Hi and you’re welcome. My strategy is to split the colony (if queen cells are present) into smaller colonies, with one frame containing multiple queen cells in each colony. I make the colonies too small to swarm with the first queen to emerge. That would only be two frames of bees in each split. I do this with preemptive swarm control splits after the emergency queen cells are produced.
Moving frames of brood around, as your mentor suggests, is my preferred method of bolstering a weaker colony. Just one frame full of brood can make an enormous difference to a weak colony. This is where a resource hive will come in handy.
By making smaller splits, you increase the chances of getting successfully mated queens, because not every colony is successful in getting a queen mated. About one in six or seven queens fail to get mated.
PS. I should clarify that sometimes a colony with multiple queen cells can issue a swarm with the first queen to emerge. In that case the first queen to emerge doesn’t kill the other queens. If the colony is strong enough, it may even issue a second swarm with the second queen to emerge. Therefore the third queen to emerge might be the one to kill all the others.
I also had a failure in my early days by killing all the queen cells bar one. That was a lesson learned.
These bèes! Third swarm disappeared in a couple of hours. I assumed they went back in the hive.
Second swarm has been in a tree for days. Set up a box w lemongrass oil, they aren’t taking the bait.
Third swarm is back again! In the exact same place, but looks bigger! Original hive w new queen (or hopefully new) seems noisier now so wondering if third swarm is from there and agitated as they are queenless or awaiting a queen. This is a bit crazy making.
Planning on going in tomorrow to assess population and add a couple of frames of drawn comb as bees aren’t taking to wax foundation. I was hoping also building out comb after a split would distract them from swarming. Wrongo!
I like your mini split idea but we do not want to expand beyond two hives…which is a shame given the present situation!
I agree with Jeff that having extra colonies is very useful and not as difficult as it seems. Besides, you can always sell some as nucs or combine some back together later in the season.
To capture a swarm without shaking it or cutting the branch it’s on, try Jeff’s trick of placing a frame of open brood next to it. The bees will be drawn to the brood pheromone and move to cover the frame in short order. Then you can transfer the frame into a box. This has worked especially well when I’ve put the brood frame into a coreflute nuc box and rigged it up right next to the cluster with the lid cracked open. The brood is more protected on a cooler spring day, and the swarm is neatly housed.
