help me with swarm control please

[brendan]

I went through my strongest hive of 3 yest. It has a two year old marked queen and is two deeps with plenty of bees. I noticed several capped queen cells both on the face of the comb and on the bottom of the bars. There was a ton of cells on several frames in the broodnest. Since this is my only hive of three that made the winter I am quite fond of this queen. I went through the hive today and found her. I think I heard her piping and I made a visual on her with her nice red dot on her back. Since I knew she was in the hive I took a few of the frames out with cells on them and put them in a nuc right next to the hive. What I understand as a walk away split.
My question. Will this work to prevent the swarming. I replaced the comb in the original hive with drawn comb and foundation. I moved the original hive over about a foot and put the nuc next to it. I could not take all of the frames with queen cells out of the hive as there were too many. Any thoughts on this strategy. I get freaked by the thought of losing this queen.

[Brian D. Bray]

If you removed the mother queen into the split then yes, it will serve to break the swarm tendency as in the old lady as left the hive, hence the hive swarmed.

The piping should have been from a newly hatched queen on one in the process of hatching.  One time, years ago, I had a piping queen hatch out onto my hand, neat experience.

[sc-bee]

>Since this is my only hive of three that made the winter I am quite fond of this queen. I went through the hive today and found her. I think I heard her piping and I made a visual on her with her nice red dot on her back. Since I knew she was in the hive I took a few of the frames out with cells on them and put them in a nuc right next to the hive. What I understand as a walk away split.

Sounds like you did not move the old Queen away from the old hive (as stated above by Brian). Therefore the smell and the pheromone is the same in the old hive. They may not see it as a change and still swarm.

If you moved the old queen to the split but still included cells in the split isn't there a chance they will still swarm (the split) if strong enough with the old queen or a new queen hatch in the split and kill the old queen?

[Two Bees]

Piping?  I haven't heard this.  Help me understand what piping is and how/when are you likely to experience it?

Thanks!

[JP]

Piping?  I haven't heard this.  Help me understand what piping is and how/when are you likely to experience it?

Thanks!

Here's an audio clip http://hemingwaysouthcarolina.com/sounds/queenpiping.wav

Piping
Piping describes a noise made by virgin and mated queen bees during certain times of the virgin queens development. Fully developed virgin queens communicate through vibratory signals: "quacking" from virgin queens in their queen cells and "tooting" from queens free in the colony, collectively known as piping. A virgin queen may frequently pipe before she emerges from her cell and for a brief time afterwards. Mated queens may briefly pipe after being released in a hive. The piping sound is variously described as a children's trumpet tooting and quacking. It is quite loud and can be clearly heard outside the hive. The piping sound is created by the flight motor without movement of the wings. The vibration energy is resonated by the thorax.

Piping is most common when there is more than one queen in a hive. It is postulated that the piping is a form of battle cry announcing to competing queens and the workers their willingness to fight. It may also be a signal to the worker bees which queen is the most worthwhile to support.

The piping sound is a G♯ or A♮. The adult queen pipes for a two-second pulse followed by a series of quarter-second toots.[2] The queens of Africanized bees produce more vigorous and frequent bouts of piping.

I copy and pasted the above for you, hope this helps.


...JP