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Author Topic: swarm (not beard) on front of brand new split?  (Read 1103 times)

Offline windfall

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swarm (not beard) on front of brand new split?
« on: July 10, 2011, 06:40:47 pm »
friday evening I went into a hive with lots of swarm cells, found the queen and pulled her along with 4 frames and put her in the other end of a long hive with 2 division boards between them and the original hive. The next day (yesterday) I pulled another 4 frame nuc with cells out (of the swarmy hive) and moved them to a friends yard.

Just now I see what must be nearly all the bees I put in the end of the long hive hanging on it's face covering the entrance several inches deep as well as the branch I placed in front of it (to help them reorient) and hanging on below....sure looks like a swarm, not the bearding I have seen before.
I did notice last night a fist size cluster completely covering the entrance and just assumed they were used to bearding like they had for the previous week (in the parent end of the hive)

I am out of gear and leaving town tues morning.

Is there any point in shaking them into a box and dumping them back in...perhaps give them a bit more space and some empty frames interspersed with the drawn? Or is this one of those times you just say "what will be will be"?


Offline skflyfish

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Re: swarm (not beard) on front of brand new split?
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2011, 07:03:48 pm »
I just had an experience similar to this. It was two frames in a split nuc that I put a virgin or young queen in to save in case the re-queening failed. After a day, most were bearding on the outside of the nuc.

It ended up being one of the frames that I placed in the split nuc was a foundationless frame that was mostly honey and it collapsed and it created a mess in the split nuc. I pulled the remaining good frame and the bees and placed them in a full nuc along with old foundation that has a rib. I also restricted the entrance. They are fine with the new setup, no bearding.

You may have something in the nuc they don't like.

HTH,

Jay

Offline windfall

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Re: swarm (not beard) on front of brand new split?
« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2011, 07:14:31 pm »
that's a good thought I will certainly take a peak in after kids are in bed.

I am obviously new to this, but the cluster out front looks like more bees than I thought I had put in in the first place....the frames were heavily covered and I did add one shake to account for lost filed bees to parent hive....perhaps I did not give them enough room?

as an aside "what will be will be" ...I swear I didn't mean the pun.....didn't even notice it till now!

Offline iddee

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Re: swarm (not beard) on front of brand new split?
« Reply #3 on: July 10, 2011, 10:12:02 pm »
I would scoop them up after checking the inside, and put them back in the hive. The queen may have gotten outside. If you get her back in, they will follow.
"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me . . . Anything can happen, child. Anything can be"

*Shel Silverstein*

Offline windfall

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Re: swarm (not beard) on front of brand new split?
« Reply #4 on: July 10, 2011, 11:57:13 pm »
Well I put a box under the hive end before i opened it up, "just in case". Glad I did, about half the clump dropped in when I pulled the lid. Inside things looked normal. The frames had fewer bees on them than when I put them in but were still well covered. I pushed back the follower and gave them a couple more empty frames on both side of the four drawn and one empty I moved when the split got made, then scooped off the rest of the clump and dumped the mess back inside. Iddee I got your comment just now, but it is reassuring...will a queen just wander out?

They seemed to settle right back down after 20 min. I guess tomorrow will be the test.

Most likely I just misjudged the volume of bees I moved over and didn't give them enough space. Is it possible additional bees from the parent hive smelled the queen and moved over?
Perhaps it was just "bearding" but it was quite unlike what I had seen before...I think all those bees would have been hard pressed to fit in without the additional space, but my sense of cluster volume is pretty week.