Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: copper137 on June 04, 2005, 09:01:23 pm

Title: Swarm
Post by: copper137 on June 04, 2005, 09:01:23 pm

The weather here sucks, It has been raining for 3 days off and on and very hot.  My bees want to hang on the outside of the hive (thousands).  One hive the queen has even come out and is hanging under the bottom board with about 1000 bees.  It seems they all want to swarm or are they just hot and humid?
What can I do if anything?

Title: Swarm
Post by: stilllearning on June 04, 2005, 09:45:12 pm

If your queen has left her brood nest, something is wrong
look for queen cells, sounds like a swarm to me.
You can put them into another hive and move them to a new
location. Use all the tricks you know to keep them.

Title: Swarm
Post by: Apis629 on June 05, 2005, 01:03:09 am

Quote

The weather here sucks, It has been raining for 3 days off and on and very hot.

You think your weather's bad...here I've had downpours every day since Tuesday.  And since thursday the only time it doesn't rain is about noon...then it picks up again.

Title: Swarm
Post by: copper137 on June 05, 2005, 04:35:22 pm

Hey Thanks

I went into my hives today, the weather finally broke.  All looked normal except for the one that wanted to swarm.
I found 10 queen cells plus the queen.  Several had hatched or had been killed by the queen.

I split the hive into several nuc's with the cells and added new foundation to the original hive.  Hope this curbs their call to swarm.

Thanks for the good advice.