Welcome, Guest

Author Topic: Swarm not wanting to stay.  (Read 800 times)

Offline Fishing-Nut

  • House Bee
  • **
  • Posts: 338
Swarm not wanting to stay.
« on: March 31, 2019, 11:34:40 am »
What can I do. I jumped the gun, went and got this swarm last night. We recently moved and my bee keeping stuff is over an hour away. I quickly threw this box together and got the bees. This box is not ventilated and I anticipated it being hot today because it has been high 70's here the last couple days so when I got home I unplugged the box and hoped for the best. We 7 am this morning they were all over the front of the box in one cluster, now 10:30 am they are in 2 separate clusters. What can I do? I'm thinking there may be 2 queens here because of the 2 different clusters. What would you guys do in this situation? Its currently only 52 degrees, overcast and windy so the bees are probably a little pissy. 
Take a kid fishing !

Offline CoolBees

  • Queen Bee
  • ****
  • Posts: 1397
  • Gender: Male
Re: Swarm not wanting to stay.
« Reply #1 on: March 31, 2019, 12:24:00 pm »
If you have another hive, take a tray of open brood and eggs and give it to them. That will keep them busy and entice them to stay. Works just about all the time.

Another thing I do is put feed on for them (sugar water) - especially when I don't want to open another hive right then. They get busy sucking it up, and start drawing comb - however this might also encourage re-swarming, so be careful on this one.

As for 2 clusters on the outside - I've seen this when I knew there was only 1 queen. Not really sure of the cause. It stops once they decide to stay (usually).

The last swarm I caught (2 weeks ago) was getting ready to leave the next morning - all clustered up on the outside. I dropped the feed jar onto the inner cover and they all ran back inside within 4 mins. I'm guessing the queen started laying soon after in the fresh comb I'd put in. They're still there, all settled down and happy now.
You cannot permanently help men by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves - Abraham Lincoln

 

anything