inspected the hvie that swarmed saturday

[scott]

          One of my hives swarmed saturday and I had a question regarding requeening the remaining colony.  I got some great advise from JP and MICI, thanks alot.  JL (who is also on the forum) and I inspected my hive today as suggested, we were able to locate a young queen, she was smaller and thinner then the queens in my other hives.  There were also between 8 and 10 swarm cells, some opened some closed.  I destroyed all of them.  MICI suggested that I destroy all but one, however once I found the new queen had already emerged, I thought I should destroy all.  Was I right in thinking that?  I hope so.  Anyway there was plenty of room for her to lay and we did find a couple of eggs.  Do you think she is already laying or are they left over from the queen that swarmed?  Any thoughs?

thanks for your help
Scott

[Mici]

glad to be of help.
and i must say, i admire your eyesight or your ability to spot the queen.
young virgin queens are really hard to spot. they're fast and look almost just like worker bees (at least the two i spotted so far did).
i highly doubt she's already laying, or should i say it's close to impossible. 16 days from egg to queen and around 25 days from egg to laying queen-depending on weather.

now, you say you saw a few opened QC's, were they opened by side/chewed or were they opened at the bottom. if they were at the bottom, you could have more than 1 queen inside resultion in another swarm. if you didn't pay real good attention to how cells were opened, just pay a bit more attention on this hive behaviour.
if they were chewed by the side, the queen that laid first, seeked&destroyed other queens while still in cells (stings them), so the worker bees start cleaning them out at side.
you did right by destroying the rest of cells, at least in my opinion, nd i think many share this opinion.

[scott]

MICI,

I have to give credit for spotting the young queen to my friend JL, my ability to spot the queen is horrible.  After JL pointer her out there is no question it was a queen.  There was around 4 swarm cells that had a hole in the bottom and a white cream remained in the cell.  I don't recall seeing a cell that had been chewed threw the side.

I gathered up the cell that I had scrapped off that were closed and brought them to my truck.  I carefully cut them open.  Two of the cells had dead bees in them but believe it or not, one had a fully developed queen that crawled out and onto my hand.  After a few moment it began to fly and circled around us at the back of the truck for awhile.  It then flew off but returned alittle while later.  Eventually we left, I don't know where she ended up.  Hopefully not back at the hive.  We were probably at least thirty feet away from the hive at the time she was released.  Do you think she could figure out which hive she belong and or would she even be accepted if she did find her way back.

Thanks for the info,
Scott

[Mici]

i'm almost positive she won't find her way to the hive, becaue she didn't fly out of it, so she doesn't know which hive is her "home". even if she does find her hive, guard bees would probably kill her.

about spotting the queen-experience count so don't worry about it, you'll get the hang of it.

[jl]

Scott's inablility to spot a queen and my ability to spot them has nothing to do with experience.  He's blind as a bat!  I just see a little better than he does.  Just kidding.  I'm a first year beekeeper and this is his second year.  It was very interesting to see the swarm cells.  (not so interesting for Scott seeing how it was his hive that swarmed) Learned alot in one afternoon.

[indypartridge]

          One of my hives swarmed saturday...  There were also between 8 and 10 swarm cells, some opened some closed.  I destroyed all of them.  MICI suggested that I destroy all but one, however once I found the new queen had already emerged, I thought I should destroy all.  Was I right in thinking that?  I hope so.

Too late to change your mind now, but I would have left them. The bees usually know what they're doing better than I do.

Anyway there was plenty of room for her to lay and we did find a couple of eggs.  Do you think she is already laying or are they left over from the queen that swarmed?  Any thoughts?

Posting time was Monday afternoon, they swarmed on Saturday, and you've seen eggs. Do I have that right? Eggs indicate a laying queen has been there within the last 3 days. In order to swarm, the queen usually stops laying several days in advance in order to slim down enough so she can fly. So either you had a departing queen which was laying right up until she left (not likely) or your "virgin" queen is laying. It's not that unusual for a mother and daughter queen to co-exist in a hive for a time. My guess is that the new queen you found has already mated and is laying, and not a virgin queen.

[scott]

indypartridge,

          Why would you have left the swarm cell?  Other then they know more then you do?  By removing the cells and providing more room, I hoped to prevent a secondary swarm.  Please correct me if I am wrong.

          Regarding the eggs, you are right, the swarm was Saturday, inspection was Monday afternoon.  We only observed I believe three eggs.  I don't know what that means, but we saw what we saw.

thanks for your input and please resond,
Scott

[jl]

Maybe we were wrong about the eggs it was the fifth hive we checked that day and I was seeing eggs in my sleep that night.

[BBHJ]

indypartridge,

          Why would you have left the swarm cell?  Other then they know more then you do?  By removing the cells and providing more room, I hoped to prevent a secondary swarm.  Please correct me if I am wrong.   

If a hive wants to swarm then its going to swarm. Theres nothing you can do to prevent it from happening. Swarming is the bees natural way of dealing with certain things that have & or is happening at the time. Its natural and all you, me, us, beekeepers can do is maybe slow down the process of a swarm alittle but we cant stop it from happening. The bees decide to swarm long before we know that they are going to. Thats what I've been taught anyway. I cant remember how long it is that they decide before we know but something like 3 weeks seems to ring a bell in my head? We can always bet that once they have decided to swarm they wont change their mind back to not swarm. I also would have left all of the cells alone. Doing so is what I was taught and I've also read about it in a couple of books/mags.

[Mici]

BBHJ, all you wrote goes for the primary swarm. because I was the one who told him to do so, i feel obligated to defend this type of doing.
like i said, all you desrcibed goes for the primary swarm, there is very little we can do about it, they'll swarm. as for the second swarm, yes we can prevent them, off course if we don't want them. and what he did was 100% succesfull in preventing the 2nd swarm ( assuming he did find ALL the QC's).

[indypartridge]

indypartridge,

          Why would you have left the swarm cell?  Other then they know more then you do?  By removing the cells and providing more room, I hoped to prevent a secondary swarm.  Please correct me if I am wrong.

Ironically, as I was driving home from work last evening I was thinking that very thing: that you may have prevented a secondary swarm. I can't say for sure; I'm not an authority and was simply offering my opinion on what I would have done. Just because I would have done it differently doesn't imply "right" or "wrong", just "different".  There are those that say to cut out swarm cells, and those that say to leave them. I didn't have much luck cutting out swarm cells so now I leave them.

Regarding the eggs, you are right, the swarm was Saturday, inspection was Monday afternoon.  We only observed I believe three eggs.  I don't know what that means, but we saw what we saw.
thanks for your input and please resond,
Scott

If you're sure you spotted a queen, and reasonably sure you saw eggs, it sounds like you're good to go. Check back later and see how she's laying and make a determination then whether you want to keep her or re-queen.

[scott]

Thankyou everyone for putting in thier two cents, and to MICI for the defense

Scott