Hive Swarmed

[bwallace23350]

My hive swarmed Monday or Tuesday. Since then I have pulled honey frames and taken out two swarm cells and found a third. I left the third. These have only been from the honey super. My question is h ave I erred and taken out all the queen cells except the one I left or do I need to take out more or what?

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

If they have swarmed and are queenless you need to leave the queens cells alone.  If a queen is present, virgin or mated she will take care, destroy, of the cells.

[bwallace23350]

They are not acting aggressive so I assume a queen is there. I would also assume that they build them other places than in my honey super. I am not going in the hive for a month now until the next flow of privet, maybe tulip poplar (I think they are yet to bloom), and Chinese talllow tree is over. We will see. On the bright side I meet tomorrow about how to get my new survivor hive out to my pasture.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Maybe a virgin daughter is present, don?t know.  However, with intact queen cells, post swarm, the bees will know there future is sucure, via queen cell, so I would expect calm bees as opposed to a queenless colony made from a split or the likes.

Good luck with the tf colony.

Tf: treatment free.

[Oldbeavo]

Only leaving one Qcell is a bit risky as if it fails to hatch you are set back a long way. I would always leave 2 as insurance.
I doubt if there is a young queen in your hive as the cells would have been torn down most of the time.
You need to check to see if the QC you left hatches, 7-10 days time.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Oldbeavo, agreed with ya.  See my first post;

{ If a queen is present, virgin or mated she will take care, destroy, of the cells.}

[bwallace23350]

Only leaving one Qcell is a bit risky as if it fails to hatch you are set back a long way. I would always leave 2 as insurance.
I doubt if there is a young queen in your hive as the cells would have been torn down most of the time.
You need to check to see if the QC you left hatches, 7-10 days time.

Would they build another place besides in the super such as in the two deep bodies?

[cao]

If your hive was two deeps and a super and they swarmed I would guess that they might swarm again.  I would assume that, if they had 3 queen cells in the super, they have plenty more cells in the deeps.  I've seen dozens of queen cells in a large hive after it swarmed.  The workers could be holding the queens in the cells in preparation for swarming again.  Can you hear any queens piping?

What did you do with the queen cells that you removed?  Anytime I find extra queen cells, I will make up a nucs with them. 

[BeeMaster2]

What CAO, described, I call super swarming. If they are holding the queens in the cells, as soon as you disturb the bees keeping the queen on that frame in her cell, the queen will cut her way out. The bees seal it back up as fast as she cuts it open.
The first thing to do is either put your ear to the hive and listen for queens piping or use a stethoscope to listen for piping. You may need to listen to each box to hear them.
If you hear piping, you need to take the hive apart or they will probably swarm over and over again every 5 days or so until the hive is too weak to survive.
You will need to prep for this by having lots of queen cages. Take one frame out at a time so as to not disturb the bees keeping the queens caged. Use minimum smoke so that you do not disturb them.
Jim

[bwallace23350]

Nothing they were on honey frames. I need some nuc boxes or something.

[bwallace23350]

What CAO, described, I call super swarming. If they are holding the queens in the cells, as soon as you disturb the bees keeping the queen on that frame in her cell, the queen will cut her way out. The bees seal it back up as fast as she cuts it open.
The first thing to do is either put your ear to the hive and listen for queens piping or use a stethoscope to listen for piping. You may need to listen to each box to hear them.
If you hear piping, you need to take the hive apart or they will probably swarm over and over again every 5 days or so until the hive is too weak to survive.
You will need to prep for this by having lots of queen cages. Take one frame out at a time so as to not disturb the bees keeping the queens caged. Use minimum smoke so that you do not disturb them.
Jim

I don't hear any piping out of it. It has been five days since the first swarm. They have seven out of ten honey frames open as they have been pulled that they need to fill up. Is that not enough to satisfy their swarming or do I need more boxes and to break this thing down and look for a queen and destroy the queen cells?

[BeeMaster2]

If you do not hear piping, I would not open it. But, I would listen several times to make sure there is no piping.
Jim

[bwallace23350]

Ok no piping I am good. Piping and I need to seek and destroy. How often does something like this happen?

[BeeMaster2]

It depends on the hive. If they think they are strong enough they do it. I learned about this from my observation hive. After the hive swarmed 3 times, with queens piping, I took it apart and found 11 queens being kept in their cells. I frantically caged them, running to get more and more cages. Then that night I found a 12th unmarked queen in the hive but not the marked queen I had put in it.
Jim

[cao]

Nothing they were on honey frames. I need some nuc boxes or something.

I would recommend that every beekeeper have a couple nuc boxes handy for similar circumstances.  It doesn't hurt a large hive to take a frame that has a queen cell on it(with bees) and another with some brood/nectar(and bees) and put it in a nuc box.  The downside, you loose a few bees.  The upside, The queen hatches, mates, returns and starts laying.  And you have a new hive to play with.  I enjoy working with nucs much more than my large production hives.  I've learned more from them then the larger hives.  I can take my time and see much more of what's going on with the smaller hives.  And they are easier on my back.

[cao]

They are not acting aggressive so I assume a queen is there.

One of the calmest hives that I've worked was one that I removed the queen(artifical swarm) and came back to it a week later to make splits with the queen cells they made.  They had 20-30 queen cells spread out on 10 frames.  The brood nest was contained in a 10 frame deep and med box.  With at least one queen cell on just about every other frame, none of the bees were ever very far away from one.  So when I took that hive apart to make 9 nucs, the bee remained calm because they could always smell their queen(cell).

I'm just saying that just because a hive is "queenless" doesn't mean that it has to be aggressive.

[BeeMaster2]

If the bees have a queen cell they calm down. It is when they cannot make a queen that they get aggressive. Even then, after a while they all calm down.
We moved and split a large hive, during Beefest, from in front of my barn to behind my house. A large ball of bees remained behind. 3 times I gave them a box with frames and added them to hives but most of them kept going back and balled up in the grass. I put a bottom less Nuc with a 11/2 drawn frames and they moved in. I inspected them 2 days ago to see if there was a queen. I did not use smoke and did not wear any protection. Even with no queen, they were calm. They were also filling in comb with nectar. I expect they will have laying workers soon.
Jim