Splits - Why give them more than one queen cell?

[Duane]

I've read that when you are splitting a hive with queen cells, give each more than one cell to ensure at least one makes it out.

This morning, I noticed a lot of bees flying out of one of my splits.  Must be orientating, not to be worried.  But the way they were pouring out like their house was on fire made me wonder.  The air was filling with them.  Fortunately, I still had leftover equipment from doing the splits nearby and had lemongrass oil handy.  I moved the box over to the tree they were concentrating on, rubbed lemon grass oil on it, and soon they landed on it.  Some started going in and there got to be less and less on the sides.  We'll see if they stay there.

I looked in the hive they came out, still a lot of bees there, so they didn't abscond.  This is day 15, expecting the queen to have hatched out tomorrow +/-.  The hive was at the original location, I moved the original queen to a new place, leaving the old location to raise queen cells.  Last Thursday, I divided the hive giving more than one queen cell to some.  This hive, I gave a little less resources knowing they were getting all the field bees.  I had a frame of food, a couple frames of bees, empty frames in the bottom box and empty frames in the top box some with drawn comb.  I was expecting the field bees to bring in nectar.

So, if anyone can answer, why did they swarm?  Hardly anything there, plenty of space.  This is from the same line that last year when I saw a swarm left, I divided up the box knowing multiple queen cells in each and they swarmed and swarmed.  With the others, if any had more than one cell, can I expect them to swarm, too?

[Duane]

And I should ask, given the current situation, that the box is under the tree and needs to be moved, the one they left from is now weaker than before, what should I do now?

My thought is to move the new box to the original location, and move the weakened box elsewhere, possibly finding the queen or remaining cell and calling it quits on that box moving the resources over to the new box.

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Mr. Duane:  looks like you did everything correctly, even move the original queen to new location...  the number of queen cells is not quainitative to swarming, wether one or a dozen cells.

Now understand, bees sometimes do the unexpected, after a swarm, a virgin daughter hatches and swarms again.  Kind of unusual, but it has happened.  This is called AFTER SWARM and in this particular case, the number of cells, at least two can affect swarming.  Remember after swarms are not the norm.

Some strains of honey bees are prone to swarming, may be noting you did, just genetics at work.

The hive with the original queen that you moved, let it be,,, Unless the queen makes more swarm cells.

Consider feeding 1X sugar (no oil) to weak hive and watch for robbing.
Blessings

[little john]

I noticed this advice just yesterday, while looking for something else:

Only leave one Q/C, whatever the size of the colony. If you leave two, there is a chance the colony will swarm with the first virgin queen to emerge, unless the colony is very small. Don't ever think nuclei or artificially swarmed colonies won't swarm!  http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/queencelluse.html

FWIW - I often insert two ...
LJ

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

LJ, most of the time when using natural queen cells, I just use what is on
the frame, wether it is one cell or several queen cells to make a split.  I have had some bad luck when trying to remove intact queen cells as I use plastacell foundation.
Blessings

[little john]

Hi Van - I work much the same as yourself (except I don't use plastic foundation) and with natural cells, give 'em whatever happens to be on the frame.  To the best of my memory, I can't ever recall a colony swarming as the result of there being more than one q/cell present.

But - I saw that advice yesterday, and as it was fresh in my mind, thought I'd chuck it in the pot, so to speak ...
'best
LJ

[Duane]

I noticed this advice just yesterday, while looking for something else:

Only leave one Q/C, whatever the size of the colony. If you leave two, there is a chance the colony will swarm with the first virgin queen to emerge, unless the colony is very small. Don't ever think nuclei or artificially swarmed colonies won't swarm!  http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/queencelluse.html

FWIW - I often insert two ...
LJ

Thanks.  Great.   Rare but happens to me!
I considered mine very small.  But lots of field worker bees from the original.  I wonder if field bees, same boxes, smell, not many combs for them to gather on, all that might have played a role?

[Duane]

The hive with the original queen that you moved, let it be,,, Unless the queen makes more swarm cells.

Yes, that one I'm leaving alone, seems to be doing fine, laying eggs, etc.
But the original location had 2 or more queen cells, one has swarmed sitting in the middle of the yard.  I don't want it there.  And after splitting up things, I don't have a spot ready for another.   I could take it elsewhere, but thinking that I'd liked put it back where they should have stayed. 

I looked at the swarm box a little later, and a few bees flying in and out, but a bunch of buzzing inside.  I'd say they're busy.   The box they came out of, with another queen cell, there's a glob on the front, much like the other boxes, acting like they're hot and not much to do.  If I were to merge them, then would some of they're hanging out "rub off" on the swarm bees and make them not do much?  I liked seeing how fast a swarm made comb last year and wouldn't want that to stop, but if they had more bees, and could inspire them to get busy, that would be better.

[Oldbeavo]

If you want to shift a hive and it is not far then move it 2-3 ft per day or 2 moves  per day till you have it where you want it. You won't lose bees or drift back to old position.
If the bees are in swarm mode and the virgin queen goes out for an orientation fly some time other bees will swarm out with her. Some time you catch small to medium size swarms that don't have eggs laid straight away due to being a young queen.
PS The box that the young queen left may now be in trouble as they wont have eggs to for a new queen.

[moebees]

Could what you have seen have been a mating swarm?

[djgriggs]

Question..

I have read both " to leave the current queen where she is and or move her over to the new split".

Hello everyone.. When making a split big or small,, should you also move the current queen from the box your splitting and put her into the new split.. I have seen many videos as to where they also transfer the queen..

I am asking because I did not do this and wondering if I should have......

[sc-bee]

Now understand, bees sometimes do the unexpected, after a swarm, a virgin daughter hatches and swarms again.  Kind of unusual, but it has happened.  This is called AFTER SWARM and in this particular case, the number of cells, at least two can affect swarming.  Remember after swarms are not the norm.

LJ needs to cross the pond and you need to come visit over here on the Southeast Coast. After swarms with hive left with multiple cells are fairly common. I know a keeper who just had their second swarm out of a hive that was given to them as a swarm. We are leaning toward the Russian lineage....

Have seen several keepers with after swarms this year. It has been a very swarmy year here on the East Coast....

[little john]

LJ needs to cross the pond and you [Van] need to come visit over here on the Southeast Coast. After swarms with hive left with multiple hives are fairly common.

My guess is it's the old, old story of 'local conditions' - I can't remember the last time I had a colony swarm - providing I keep on top of things (meaning: forever pinching frames of brood), they simply never get a chance to ...

But - this year might just be different - we had appalling weather in early spring, followed by a serious heatwave - which stimulated colonies from truly pathetic strengths to 'wall-to-wall capped brood on nearly every frame' in just 18 days.  It's taken me by surprise.  I went around the apiary yesterday looking for open brood with which to prime some queen-rearing hives with nurse bees - and couldn't find any really good ones !  Whereas normally, there's always a few around.  Ok, so I can create these by chequer-boarding empty drawn frames into brood-nests (which I've now done), but overall - unless I get involved in some serious brood-nest management this year, swarming seems very likely.

So - on the strength of one observation from just one apiary in a country which normally has lousy weather - maybe swarming as you describe it is very much a climate-related event ?
LJ

[sc-bee]

LJ needs to cross the pond and you [Van] need to come visit over here on the Southeast Coast. After swarms with hive left with multiple hives are fairly common.

My guess is it's the old, old story of 'local conditions' - I can't remember the last time I had a colony swarm - providing I keep on top of things (meaning: forever pinching frames of brood), they simply never get a chance to ...
So - on the strength of one observation from just one apiary in a country which normally has lousy weather - maybe swarming as you describe it is very much a climate-related event ?
LJ

Splitting them down and opening the brood area over and over has not worked well this year for folks I know on this US East side. It has been very odd indeed this spring. What looked like it was going to be a boom nectar flow has been washed away with pretty much two and half weeks of straight rain not giving anytime for the blooms to build anymore sweet sticky. And or an area that only gets about an 8 week flow for the year it looks pretty much a WASH for the year 

I made one split with about two frames of bees and intentionally left about 5 cells on the bottom of a frame to see what would happen. (I actually split the Russian hive three ways leaving only two cells in each of the other two splits) The part with the five cells threw swarm after swarm leaving a box with about three hundred bees and a queen. It is my first year dealing with Russians. Maybe some of it has to do with the bees???

[Michael Bush]

Every colony makes their own decisions.  The time of year has as much to do with swarming as overcrowding.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm

[texanbelchers]

As to the OPs question, I would find a way to maintain both "new" hives for the short term.  If all goes well, you will have 2 new, mated queens.  If there is a problem, you have a backup readily available.  You could choose to maintain a NUC or just choose a queen and merge back later.

[Duane]

Could what you have seen have been a mating swarm?

The bees must be crazy.

There seemed less on the front of the swarm box than the other boxes, I assuming they are busy inside and not hot.  Well, about the same time today, I noticed a lot of bees in the air, landing in the top of a cedar.   Another swarm was landing on a pear tree.  Lacking any more boxes set up, I thought I'd check the swarm box and nothing there but a few bees robbing out a little nectar deposited.  A little later, I noticed the box they came out of yesterday had a lot of bees over the top and sides with their rears in the air scenting.  Less bees on the pear and cedar and soon none.

Could it be, the queen left to take care of "personal stuff" and a bunch saw she was leaving and said, let's swarm, time to go!  Then they were embarrassed at intruding, or wondered where she went, and went back home (at least for today's instance).  I'm out there with my lemongrass oil and kind of confused things up a bit.  The bees yesterday landed on a box with comb and responding to stimuli went in.  Later they realized they had no queen and went back home.  Which resulted in the bunch of bees on the box I had noticed and seemed like just as much as before because they indeed were the same bunch.  If I had been there later I would not have known anything had happened.

So tell me about mating swarms.  I'm not familiar with how they work.

[Duane]

Question..

I have read both " to leave the current queen where she is and or move her over to the new split".

Hello everyone.. When making a split big or small,, should you also move the current queen from the box your splitting and put her into the new split.. I have seen many videos as to where they also transfer the queen..

I am asking because I did not do this and wondering if I should have......

I think either one works.  What I did in my case was move the queen to a new box and the old box raised several queen cells.  Which was what I wanted.  If you don't want your own queens, you might do it differently.

[Duane]

I made one split with about two frames of bees and intentionally left about 5 cells on the bottom of a frame to see what would happen. (I actually split the Russian hive three ways leaving only two cells in each of the other two splits) The part with the five cells threw swarm after swarm leaving a box with about three hundred bees and a queen. It is my first year dealing with Russians. Maybe some of it has to do with the bees???

So I'm trying to learn from this.  But as Michael Bush says, the colony and time of year affects things, so what I should have done this year may not work next year.  And it may have worked perfectly for this year, I just don't really know at this point.  But looking at it from either probability or worst case, should one only put one queen cell in each box?   And if you have a frame with multiple cells, or don't want / can't have that many boxes, kill the other cells?  Or make sure your biggest split only has one cell?  I just find the idea hard to do, let alone actually squashing a cell or queen.  But I should have done that last fall instead of letting them die through the winter.

[Acebird]

But I should have done that last fall instead of letting them die through the winter.

You can't use cells in the fall unless your area has mating weather and there are still drones available.  About all you can do is combine nurse bees and brood and then split in the spring.

[Duane]

Sorry, I meant the idea of squashing a queen was hard to do last fall.  I believed some died because there was not enough mass there.  If they were combined with others, maybe they would have survived.

[djgriggs]

Question..

I have read both " to leave the current queen where she is and or move her over to the new split".

Hello everyone.. When making a split big or small,, should you also move the current queen from the box your splitting and put her into the new split.. I have seen many videos as to where they also transfer the queen..

I am asking because I did not do this and wondering if I should have......

I think either one works.  What I did in my case was move the queen to a new box and the old box raised several queen cells.  Which was what I wanted.  If you don't want your own queens, you might do it differently.

Hello everyone.. I am looking for a good school a place where I can learn about bees . Anyone know of a place like that ???? :) , kidding I am here. :)  no really

I think that I might have screwed up my split... I was trying to do a split to get ahead of the bees swarming.. Well as it turns out I think the bees swarmed just before my split. I say that because I could not find any new eggs in the original hive today. I mean it was getting a little dim / dark out. I did see capped brood / larva / and a lot of empty cells that should have had something in them "all of this in the top box" I also seen a few swarm cells and what appeared to be 3 queen cells almost fully capped. These Cells were not there this weekend...

When I did the split on this hive I had put the frame that had the first capped queen cell over to the split... my concern is ,, How bad did I screw up :) , I wanted to keep the genetics of the original queen and by doing the split I thought I was getting ahead of the swarm. I think they beat me to it...

One concern that I have is that I read somewhere that the bees should make a queen from an egg / very young larva if it is three days or so old it will not make a good queen,, how true is this and sense I did not see eggs in the top box where I normally would does this hurt my chances of the new queen cells giving me a good queen ?
What would happen if I put back the from with the Original queen cell.. (good thing / bad thing,,good idea / bad idea) now that there are at least 1 /3 new queen cells in that hive. Will they be good queens ? How do you know the quality of the queen other than the laying pattern etc ?

Thank you ,

[cao]

Sorry, I meant the idea of squashing a queen was hard to do last fall.  I believed some died because there was not enough mass there.  If they were combined with others, maybe they would have survived.

I don't like the idea either.  I like giving them a chance even if it a slim one.  Sometimes they suprise you.  I had one that I thought would never make it through winter this year.  The bees filled about five medium frames last fall.  They are doing just fine right now with two 10 frame medium boxes mostly filled.

When I did the split on this hive I had put the frame that had the first capped queen cell over to the split... my concern is ,, How bad did I screw up :) , I wanted to keep the genetics of the original queen and by doing the split I thought I was getting ahead of the swarm. I think they beat me to it...

If you left the queen in the original hive and just removed capped queen cells, odds are they will still swarm(or have already swarmed).  When I see swarm cells in progress and can find the queen, I will remove her(with some bees) to simulate a swarm.  I don't think you screwed up too much.   If you have at least a queen cell in your split, then leave them alone for 2-3 weeks for the queen to do her thing.  If you have multiple queen cells in your original hive, you could do more splits or leave them be and let them sort it out.

As the saying goes:  When you don't know what to do then do nothing.  The bees will work it out.

[beepro]

If you have multiple cells then let the first queen destroy the rest usually this is the case after the first queen emerged.   I've watched a new queen done this before.  So you don't have to squish any Q-cell.   Just let the bees do it by their own.

Yes, to ensure that there is a live queen you should make splits that are not that strong then give them 2 Q-cells in each hive.  The strong hive can still make after swarm if you give them 2 cells.  This is because the first queen that emerged might not find the 2nd queen cell that fast allowing the 2nd queen to swarm.  The crowded hive will also hinder the 1st queen's ability to move that fast also. 

[Acebird]

These Cells were not there this weekend...

Are they cells or just cups?

[djgriggs]

These Cells were not there this weekend...

Are they cells or just cups?

Cells,, fully formed , currently being capped.

[Michael Bush]

>But looking at it from either probability or worst case, should one only put one queen cell in each box?

It's always a "numbers" game.  What is most likely to go wrong?  What is most likely to work?  I would leave all the queen cells.

[Duane]

Yesterday, a little later than the previous two days, I was looking at another box to make sure they had room since there was a whole blanket of bees out front when it's hot.  The box that had been doing their swarming and returning was next to it and looked calm and non-eventful.  Partway through the first hive, I noticed there was increased activity next door, and then bees were pouring out.  Been there, done that, so I wasn't worried as I figured more of the previous days.  I went through the first hive (looking at all the queen cups) split it up, and then went to find the swarm.  It was way above my head in a cedar tree.  And this had been some time.  I thought maybe the prior ones were trial runs and this was the real deal.  I set a box over there, but they weren't moving.  It looked pretty big as in, how could there be much left in the split. 

Most swarms I've noticed, the bees on the outside seemed quite compact, non-moving except for a few coming in.  but these, lots of bees on the outside were moving all over the sides.  And a lot more bees coming and going in the air.   After awhile, more bees were in the air and I looked over at the box and several bees were on the outside with their rears in the air.  I kept watching and more and more bees were flying in the air, but I was waiting for the whole mass to come back to the hive, land on it and go in.  Quite a few came to be on the outside of the hive, but not the mass I saw in the tree.  Looking over at the swarm, I could see a few bees here and there coming to the hive.  It appeared it was only a few at a time until not so many in the air over by the cedar tree.  No swarm left, and I'm pretty sure they all came back. 

Now while I may not have all that experience of observing swarms, I feel I have more than the ones who call someone all panicky about bees setting up residence in their tree.  If I can't tell if bees are swarming or mating, how could someone who don't know about bees.  I'm starting to think it's very good advice to tell a caller, if the bees are still there at 6 p.m., give me a call, rather dropping everything and rushing right over.

I keep checking the other splits and have never noticed such things.  Did I miss them, or why the one several times and the others no such activity?  This is something new to me, never had come across it before.

[Duane]

Now to the question of the next box with queen cells.  I thought they had space, but maybe I don't fully understand opening the brood nest.  Maybe you have to keep doing that past swarm cutoff date?  They had space to store nectar, but were storing it in the brood nest, lots of brood, lots of bees, lots of queen cups.

I looked in the queen cups and several had eggs.  One was more developed and had a larva, I'm guessing several days old.  I did find the queen, moved her to a new box a few feet and some open brood that had no queen cups, (hope I could see them all), the honey and pollen.  I left the rest at the old location. 

Since this doesn't seem cut and dried, could someone give me some odds or guesses as to what is going to happen giving that one queen cup is further along than the others?  Would this be a strong indication the plan was after swarms or just a one swarm and the queen would kill the rest?  I figure I have a little over a week to figure out what to do.

[Acebird]

Swarm cells are of different ages.  Emergency cells are all the same age.  So I would conclude the colony has decided to swarm.

[Duane]

Latest update:  The one with the bees left 3 times and came back, well, based on the time, I should start seeing eggs.  Actually it's about 7 weeks old so past time.  Instead, I see a few capped drones, very few larva, and a queen cell that's either hatched or not yet capped.  What would be some conclusions of what happened?

I now added a frame of brood with eggs from another hive.  I have a double nuc I had made from another hive and they do not have many bees.  Their source hive queen cups had eggs in them May 30, so the queens shouldn't be laying eggs just yet.  The current queen cell could have a real queen, so I could just leave it alone.  I've heard that sometimes bees will try to make a queen cell around a drone larva.  Adding the frame of eggs may allow them to start new queen cells.  But if they should start developing other queen cells, what would someone else do?  If I didn't want to wait another month but use a queen from the nuc, how would I go about introducing her?