Welcome, Guest

Author Topic: Are my bees swarming?  (Read 11511 times)

Offline Lord Viykor

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 54
  • Gender: Male
    • Viykor.com - My adventures in backyard farming
Are my bees swarming?
« on: August 11, 2012, 12:39:55 am »
I was in my yard today and noticed a swarm in my yard and over into the neighbours yard. As first I thought it was robber bees, the swarm has now settled in a tree on the far side of my neighbours block.

So I opened my hive and the top box is only partially full of honey cells after my extraction a little while ago. As I'm still very new to this I thought this would be a sign that they aren't swarming, I then notice my queen was on the outside of the hive walking along the brood box.

I captured her and re-inserted her in the hive entrance, I haven't opened the brood box to have a look yet. I'm assuming I could have a virgin queen about and the hive has swarmed. Wasn't sure though considering the queen was still near the box.

Any advice is greatly welcomed as I have no idea, I was going to set up a nuc box with some foundation to try and catch the swarm. Also wasn't sure if it would return considering the queen is/was still in the box.

Offline bernsad

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 462
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #1 on: August 11, 2012, 01:22:58 am »
I think it would be highly unusual if the swarm was next door and the queen for that swarm was sitting on your box. That queen should be safely ensconced inside the swarm. Rather, I would suspect that the queen you found crawled out of the box after you opened it. How were the numbers in the hive when you opened it? Busy, or did it seem light on?

By all means, go and catch that swarm before they get away. Put the nuc underneath the swarm and shake it in, put the lid on and let the remainder of the bees find their way in to get settled. Move it after dark to where you want to keep it. Good luck and don't forget the photos if you can. :-D

Offline Lord Viykor

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 54
  • Gender: Male
    • Viykor.com - My adventures in backyard farming
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #2 on: August 11, 2012, 03:11:20 am »
Definitely a swarm, it's a lot of bees in the tree. I'm currently trying to box them all, them seem to be moving into it slowly.

The box is all empty frames 5 with foundation on, I assume I should throw in a honey/pollen one from my existing hive?





Offline Lord Viykor

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 54
  • Gender: Male
    • Viykor.com - My adventures in backyard farming
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #3 on: August 11, 2012, 03:17:42 am »
Apologies for another post I wasn't sure how many images I could link. The ones below are of my existing brood box, as I now next to nothing I was hoping someone could tell me if I have any problems. To my untrained eye it looks I've photos I've seen of foul brood.








Offline Johnny253

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 92
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #4 on: August 11, 2012, 10:08:15 am »
Your swarm will be fine, it shouldn't take them long to establish themselves. If you want to speed the process up a bit though, you could ad a frame of honey/pollen, brood or drawn comb.

Your brood frames look fine to me. If they have AFB, the cells will appear sunken and the capping will have holes in it. I can't see any evidence of that in your frames.

Offline Lord Viykor

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 54
  • Gender: Male
    • Viykor.com - My adventures in backyard farming
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #5 on: August 11, 2012, 06:40:53 pm »
Your swarm will be fine, it shouldn't take them long to establish themselves. If you want to speed the process up a bit though, you could ad a frame of honey/pollen, brood or drawn comb.

I was going to add a frame of drawn comb from my hive today to it, thanks for the tip.

Quote
Your brood frames look fine to me. If they have AFB, the cells will appear sunken and the capping will have holes in it. I can't see any evidence of that in your frames.

Again thanks, it good to know everything is ok. I was surprised how little brood there is than I remember it is winter. I've only had bee for 10 months so still so  much to learn.

Offline BlueBee

  • Galactic Bee
  • ******
  • Posts: 4587
  • Gender: Male
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #6 on: August 12, 2012, 02:00:28 am »
So I’m guessing from your photos, that the conclusion is your bee’s are the bees that swarmed?  I see queen cells on your brood frames and not an over abundance of bees on those frames, so I assume at least half the original bees flew the coup at some point?  Where is the queen that you saw in your original post?  Is it still in the original hive?  I don’t see a lot of honey left around those brood frames, but probably enough for the number of bees I see.  It looks like you don’t have much of a winter there either?

Offline Lord Viykor

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 54
  • Gender: Male
    • Viykor.com - My adventures in backyard farming
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #7 on: August 12, 2012, 02:54:25 am »
So I’m guessing from your photos, that the conclusion is your bee’s are the bees that swarmed?  I see queen cells on your brood frames and not an over abundance of bees on those frames, so I assume at least half the original bees flew the coup at some point?  Where is the queen that you saw in your original post?  Is it still in the original hive?  I don’t see a lot of honey left around those brood frames, but probably enough for the number of bees I see.  It looks like you don’t have much of a winter there either?

I don't think they're my bees, I opened the hive today to grab a fully drawn comb and a partially drawn comb to put in the new hive. There is still a lot of bees in my original hive and the new box has probably more again.

The queen AFAIK is still in the original hive, I'll check the new hive in a week or so once they've settled down a bit to see if she did leave. I did notice the queen cells in on the brood frames, the lack of brood cells has be  bit concerned though. The original hive had 10 fully drawn combs and 10 partially drawn combs in it.

Offline BlueBee

  • Galactic Bee
  • ******
  • Posts: 4587
  • Gender: Male
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #8 on: August 12, 2012, 12:49:55 pm »
OK, that sounds good.  I was just a little concerned about your original hive because there wasn’t very many bees on the frames you posted photos of.   But if the bees are in there and you still have a queen in there, you should be good to go with 2 hives now. 

That really is a pretty good sized swarm.  Are they still bearding all over your box?  If so (and it’s late winter over there) you might want to add another box to give those bees room to roost.  I don't like to have a bunch of bees beading outside my hives in bad weather.

Offline Lord Viykor

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 54
  • Gender: Male
    • Viykor.com - My adventures in backyard farming
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #9 on: August 13, 2012, 03:29:55 am »
OK, that sounds good.  I was just a little concerned about your original hive because there wasn’t very many bees on the frames you posted photos of.   But if the bees are in there and you still have a queen in there, you should be good to go with 2 hives now.
 

I hope the queen is still there  :) I'm assuming she is the hive is very active and rather calm to approach. The worst is I'll have to either re-queen or they'll hopefully use one of the existing queen or supercedure cells.

That really is a pretty good sized swarm.  Are they still bearding all over your box?  If so (and it’s late winter over there) you might want to add another box to give those bees room to roost.  I don't like to have a bunch of bees beading outside my hives in bad weather.[/quote]

They've all settled in the new box well, I did add another box to it for room as you suggested. Need to get some more frames now. The new hive was still a bit agitated when I put the second box on yesterday. I hope I got the queen with the swarm, I'll check on them later this week and see if they've settled down.

Offline BlueBee

  • Galactic Bee
  • ******
  • Posts: 4587
  • Gender: Male
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #10 on: August 13, 2012, 01:51:51 pm »
Don’t wait too long to get frames in that second box.  The bees (especially swarms) have a tendency to quickly build comb in open spaces.  That results in a HUGE mess if you don’t nip it in the bud.

When you check your original hive, you can get by just looking for eggs or young larvae.  If you see eggs, you know you’ve had a queen in there recently (within 3 days) and she’s very likely still there.  This might depend upon your climate though.  In the winter the queens can shut down depending upon how cold you get.  But if you’re having swarms now, your winters must be pretty mild.

Offline the-ecohouse.com

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 263
    • the-ecohouse.com
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #11 on: August 14, 2012, 01:58:35 am »
mate that is a VERY healthy swarm

Offline Satch

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 65
  • Gender: Male
  • Grandpa and Brandon in the hives
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #12 on: August 14, 2012, 03:11:41 pm »
My son asked the same thing I was thinking.  Is that drone brood?  Cells look awfully tall to be brood.

Might check for a laying worker.

Offline BlueBee

  • Galactic Bee
  • ******
  • Posts: 4587
  • Gender: Male
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #13 on: August 14, 2012, 11:24:20 pm »
Looks like mostly worker brood to me.  The question I have: Is there larvae on those frames in the original hive or just capped brood? 

Offline Lord Viykor

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 54
  • Gender: Male
    • Viykor.com - My adventures in backyard farming
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #14 on: August 14, 2012, 11:25:53 pm »
My son asked the same thing I was thinking.  Is that drone brood?  Cells look awfully tall to be brood.

Might check for a laying worker.

It does look like a bit like drone brood, I'm learning a lot this week about my bees. I'll check for laying worker as well.

Looks like mostly worker brood to me.  The question I have: Is there larvae on those frames in the original hive or just capped brood?  

I've got both I checked the brood box out well today trying to find the queen.

Good news is my orignal hive still has it's queen and she has been busy laying eggs, the bees are very active again. I've reduced the 2 supers to 9 frames instead of 10 as I was having problems getting all ten frames to fit.

The two frames I removed went into the new hive and I checked it again today and confirmed it has a queen in it. They have been very busy building up on the frames with both foundation and no foundation. No evidence of brood yes though, hopefully I'll be seeing brood once they build up the frames enough.

Offline Lord Viykor

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 54
  • Gender: Male
    • Viykor.com - My adventures in backyard farming
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #15 on: August 17, 2012, 10:44:53 pm »
I filled the top box of my swarm hive today with frames and foundation. One thing I've noticed is there is no brood cells yet.

I would have expected to see them starting to appear, it has only been a week since I boxed up the swarm though. They have built up a lot of comb on the foundation less frames.


Offline bernsad

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 462
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #16 on: August 17, 2012, 11:31:14 pm »
Do you mean no capped brood or no brood at all? The instructor at the beek meeting the other night suggested that the queen will lay in a cell that is still only half built and let the bees keep on building around the egg. Perhaps it's only a few more days until you have capped brood.

Offline Lord Viykor

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 54
  • Gender: Male
    • Viykor.com - My adventures in backyard farming
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #17 on: August 17, 2012, 11:57:28 pm »
Do you mean no capped brood or no brood at all? The instructor at the beek meeting the other night suggested that the queen will lay in a cell that is still only half built and let the bees keep on building around the egg. Perhaps it's only a few more days until you have capped brood.

No brood at all so far, lot of comb and they've also consumed a fair bit of the 2capped off combs I put into the box.

Offline BlueBee

  • Galactic Bee
  • ******
  • Posts: 4587
  • Gender: Male
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #18 on: August 18, 2012, 01:40:29 am »
1.  Your swam might have a virgin queen.

2.  Your swarm might have no queen

3.  Eggs are hard to see  :-D

Offline BlueBee

  • Galactic Bee
  • ******
  • Posts: 4587
  • Gender: Male
Re: Are my bees swarming?
« Reply #19 on: August 18, 2012, 01:48:38 am »
The virgin queens still have the distinctive look of a queen, but they are not as big as a mated laying queen.  

If there is a queen in the swarm hive, you should eventually see some brood.  If you don't see anything after a couple of weeks, I would add a frame with eggs from your other hive if you can spare it.  The purpose of that would be to make sure your swarm bees really have a viable queen or not.  If they start to build queen cells, your swarm queen might be a dud for some reason.  Give it a couple of weeks first.  Patience is a virtue  :)