I've got 2 TBH's this year installed from packages. They were originally placed into the same hive body on either end. Last week I moved one colony to a new hive body. As I expected there was alot of drift back to the old hive body. I was not able to get a look inside until today due to weather when I was available to look in.
There were lots of bees hanging around outdoors all week so I was a bit nervous and rightly so. Not only were there bees all over the the outside but literally covering the sides, bottom of the hive. The girls had 18 bars all but 3 of them are fully drawn. I found about 10 acorn cells and at least 4 queen cells with larvae in them. Mostly on 1 frame.
The queen is laying great in fact she doesn't appear to have slimmed down to swarm at all. I took 3 frames out of the colony and placed them over on the other side were I am still having bees return from the other colony. One of those frames I moved has 3 maybe 4 queen cells nearly ready to be capped. I removed 1 queen cell from another frame and don't think there was larvae in any of the other acorns. I also added 3 more empty bars into the brood nest, between 1-2 frames of brood. Though to be frank there is only 1 maybe 2 combs in there that seem to be only honey every other comb has at least 50% brood on it.2 more bars, one on each end of the colony.
This is the frame with the 3 maybe 4 queen cells.
I know once the bees get it into their mind to swarm its pretty much a done deal but I am really hoping to at least delay the inevitable as I will be out of town when the queen cells should be 'hatching'. Is it reasonable to assume that the queen will likely go ahead and lay in the other acorn cells?
I need to quickly.... build some Nucs this week. I'm just afraid the main colony will swarm while I am out of town.
Here is a pic of the queen. Doesn't look like she'd be likely to fly anytime soon to me but what do I know?