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Author Topic: collected a swarm-now what?  (Read 1163 times)

Offline CaribBeeman

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collected a swarm-now what?
« on: August 07, 2016, 11:57:26 pm »
The hive in my backyard cast off a swarm today. I was fortunate to have been able to observe the swarming first hand. I was just about to feed the fowl when they started to come out and swirl around above the hive. 
being new to beekeeping I was'nt sure what was happening. I ran inside and grabbed a poorly made nuc box, added 3 drops of lemongrass oil and put it on top of the fowl shed. well that didnt work. however the swarm settled on a branch about 3 ft away from the box.
so we climbed the shed and shook the bees into the box, added three empty frames and a cover and brought them down to the ground.

question is - What do I do to convince them to stay in the box and prevent them from leaving?


Offline divemaster1963

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Re: collected a swarm-now what?
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2016, 01:14:28 am »
give them a frame of brood from your good hive. Make sure you have good mix of eggs and no queen cells. That should lock them in.

John

Offline GSF

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Re: collected a swarm-now what?
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2016, 08:18:23 am »
Make sure the domiciled queen isn't on the frame as well.
When the law no longer protects you from the corrupt, but protects the corrupt from you - then you know your nation is doomed.

Offline CaribBeeman

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Re: collected a swarm-now what?
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2016, 09:34:39 pm »
The swarm is still in the box. They have almost filled 3 frames with comb. I was unable to get a frame of brood, so we closed off the entrance, put a queen excluder on top of the nuc, and left a one inch gap on the lid. we assumed that this was a first swarm so the queen would not need to go out on her mating flight.

The original hive is a swarm we caught in March, but they are only partially occupying 3 frames.  I read somewhere on here that if you mix wax foundation with plastic it dont work. Seems the first swarm had the same opinion. They did not build on the last two frames.
It looks to me (inexperienced eyes), that the new hive is at least twice as big as the parent hive. I also get the feeling the old one wants to swarm again. I haven't done a proper inspection of the built comb because there is cross-combing and the hive gets annoyed when i move the frames, probably because we break comb.

Offline BeeMaster2

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Re: collected a swarm-now what?
« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2016, 10:41:38 pm »
You can check to see if they plan to swarm again by listening to the hive. If they are planning on swarming again, they will keep the queens locked in their cells. The bees seal the ends of the cell while the queens are cutting it open. The queens pipe and you can hear it out side of the hive. The last time my observation hive super swarmed, I could hear 3 different queens piping and when I opened the hive I found and marked 10 queens and ended up finding another queen in the hive that killed the marked queen that I left in the hive.
If they are done swarming, you will not hear the piping.
Jim
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