BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER > REQUEENING & RAISING NEW QUEENS

Swarm Queens

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TJ:
It is now swarm season and many hobby beekeepers are looking for free bees. My first swarm was 3 feet up a maple tree in someones back yard. Are they all that easy? :lol:  Well, after a week, my new swarm, which has lots and lots of bees, has built a ton of wax, but I can't find any sign of the Queen. I thought I did a good job capturing this swarm. I even saw many bees flying into the box I dumped the cluster into. I assumed this meant they smelled the Queen in there. So I ordered a new Queen, but now I was told maybe it was an afterswarm with a virgin Queen and she still needs to go on her mating flight.  How long should I wait to find out? If I wait an extra week and there was no Queen in there the whole time, have I lost my chance to introduce a new Queen? I have not introduced the new Queen yet.

Lesli:

--- Quote from: TJ ---It is now swarm season and many hobby beekeepers are looking for free bees.
--- End quote ---


I'm one of them! AND I'm in Ithaca. If you see another swarm, especially one that close to the ground, email me!

beemaster:
The Internet's good, but compressing a swarm and attaching it to an email - I'm not sure if Explorer supports that yet. Of course Netscape may have a plug in  :shock:

And you thought I knew NOTHING about computers - lol

Lesli:

--- Quote from: beemaster ---The Internet's good, but compressing a swarm and attaching it to an email - I'm not sure if Explorer supports that yet. Of course Netscape may have a plug in  :shock:

And you thought I knew NOTHING about computers - lol
--- End quote ---


 :lol:

The daily swarms I catch are in the College's spamtrap, alas. And those are more like cockroaches than bees!

steve:
TJ,
 It's been my experiance that after a week to ten days you can find neither eggs or brood it might be prudent to requeen, considering that you also mentioned that your swarm had a large amount of bees which generally indicates a primary swarm. Most after swarms (virgin queens)are tipically not large swarms. Take care, if you wait to long to requeen, over two weeks, you run the risk of creating laying workers....
                                                                      Steve,

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