in my last post i mentioned how i actually had my first positive outcome after 3 months of checking my bees. now its all gone to hell. three weeks ago i found a dead queen in front of my hive, two weeks ago i found another dead queen in front of my hive, last week i found a new queen in the hive and this one was small and differant looking so i knew this was a virgin queen as there were no eggsin the hive. also i noticed a lot of drone activety so i figured there would soon be a mating flight and everything would be just swell. so for this week my most anticipated inspection of the season, as i open the hive with giddy anticipation expecting to see a busy queen and tons of eggs, "huh, seems like less bees in here, .... a lot less bees... what the bleep....oh bleep theyve swarmed". at least half of the pop. is gone and that queen didn,t leave even one egg that i could find. the only brood i have now is a few capped and very little of those.
i have a new queen coming on thurs. i hope they can straighten themselves out before winter. i didnt know they swarmed at this time of year. they had plenty of room to expand (about six frames of foundation in two deeps). how long after emerging does the queen mate and then start laying?