Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: Qortni on May 05, 2012, 06:41:53 pm
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We came home Thursday afternoon to find a small swarm (2-3 lbs?) not far from our 2 hives and 1 of them was bearding (our main hive, the other hive being a captured swarm out of the main hive from last September) so we assume that was one that swarmed. We captured the the swarm in a plastic nuc right before a severe storm and nightfall. 1st thing the following morning we transferred the swarm to an empty deep w/ an entrance reducer and a top feeder with a quart of 1:1 sugar water. Late this morning the hive that we suspected the swarm came from swarmed again. We got out our gear and prepared to play w/ bees up in a tree and to our pleasant surprise the swarm moved right next door into the new new deep w/ the swarm from Thursday.
We're still new to beekeeping and can't find any info on this kind of situation. Has anyone had something similar happen to them? The initial swarm was nazanoving and rapidly sucking into the nuc after I got the main clump in there so I assume there was a queen in with the first swarm. Is that a poor assumption? If not, are there now 2 queens in the new hive? Would they swarm a second a time w/o a queen? Any guesses?
~ Jason & Qortni
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I had the same thing happen once, years ago. One of my hives swarmed while I was at work and I was able to collect the swarm and put them into an empty hive. Then, a couple days later there was another swarm, much smaller, in another place in the yard. I collected the new swarm and dumped them into the hive with the other swarm, since I had no other empty hives. The next day, there was a dead queen right in front of that hive. I figured both swarms had a queen and the bees probably killed the virgin queen with the small swarm.
I have read that a strong hive can throw several swarms.
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So you forced them to do what ours did on their own. We're out of woodenware so we were thinking we would have to do that also. The ladies just made it easy for us I guess. :) I'm just really surprised they'd do that on their own. I've never heard of a swarm invading another hive.