About 10 days ago I opened a hive and found it loaded up with q-cells...maybe 8 capped and a bunch about to be.
That evening I found the queen and pulled her and 4 frames for a split.
I also pulled 4 frames loaded with bees and 2 caped cells, put them in a 8 frame box with some empty frames and moved this split down to a friends about 2 miles away.
well, I got a call from my friend 2 days ago that she had found a small swarm in the yard which she is pretty sure did not come from her hive.
I don't mind the split swarming, I told her to take the bees (I was out of town). But it does make me wonder a couple things:
Was it a mistake to leave more than one capped cell in the split?
could I have done anything else (without any empty drawn comb) to avoid it? Or were the bees just so far down the path to swarming that it was going to happen no matter what I did?
I don't know if either the parent hive or the split with the original queen swarmed, I was out of town. But another friend house sitting didn't notice anything. I plan to peek in on everybody tomorrow now that I am home.