Swarm with empty queen cells ?

[mushmushi]

Hello,

How possible would it be for a hive to swarm if there are only empty little queen cups (maybe 20-30% build)  ?

Note that it has been raining for two days and it has been raining this whole Spring.

While gone today for mushroom hunting, my family thought the hives were swarming.
I think they were just performing orientation flights, however they swear it sounded like a engine and that it formed a huge cloud.
It went back right in once it started raining.

I checked the hive and noticed the following:
* quite a few frames with brood
* some empty frames in the bottom box
* presence of uncapped brood
* a few little, empty queen cups
* unable to see eggs due to lack of light
* a little bit of honey in the frames, most of them are capped brood
* few bees in the honey super

Do you guys think the colony could swarm without filling at least a queen cell ?

I thought small, empty, queen cups meant nothing except they must be monitored.  :?

Cheers

[jajtiii]

No, they are going to raise a full queen (and it will take more then a cup) to swarm.

You either missed the swarm cells (there should be more then one) or your friends are mistaken (more likely the case). I rarely ever listen seriously to the non-beekeeping folks that give me status reports on my hives. I love to chat bees with them, but I do not take their observations seriously.