did I do the right thing?

[tree_entz]

Sigh, well, I guess one thing I've learned about bee keeping is that there are many ways to accomplish a particular outcome...only if the bees go along w/ it.

Of my 9 hives, i have 2 overwintered ones. One of these two has been going gang busters: 2 deeps, 2 supers....supers getting filled. I went down to give them a screened bottom board and did a quick inspection. top deep has lots of honey & open brood, some eggs...bottom had LOTs of capped brood, but also found ONE queen cell on very bottom of frame. Queen cell was filled about 1/3 of the way (would this be about 8 days old?) but not capped.

I took this frame and about 4 others of mostly capped brood & a frame of capped honey and put them in a new frame. I replaced all of them w/ frames w/ starter strips/ staggering the brood nest.

The new hive has (I think) only a small area of eggs from what I can see. The old hive has eggs as well (just in case) as I couldn't find the queen right away (soo many bees) but i'm pretty sure she didnt' make it to the new hive.

So my question is: did I do the right thing? My goal was to keep this hive in honey production, and just try to stave off a swarm.

other questions are:
-is one queen cell (bottom of brood nest) enough to indicate a swarm?
-is one queen cell enough for the new hive to raise a queen, or is this not enough to ensure a successful queen.


I did this only saturday afternoon, so I would anticpate I could 'correct' any major goofs I made.

I humbly submit my questions to you all.

[peggjam]

Depends on whether you saw the queen in the hive you removed the swarm cell from. If you didn't see the queen, then they may have already swarmed and are now queenless because you took the queen cell. Once a swarm cell is capped, the hive swarms within a short time, usually a few days.

But, you can always combine the nuc back to the parent hive once the queen is mated. Or let them raise another one.:)

[tree_entz]

Thanks Peggjam!

I dont believe they swarmed yet. There were a lot of bees still there, and a lot of capped brood. Next, the queen cell was occupied. Would this lead you to believe that this was a pre-swarm condition?

Again, my goal here (like most) is to have a good producing hive for this year while preventing a swarm. We still have a good fall flow to look forward to where I live, so I guess I could always recombine. I just wish I knew if I did the best thing and if I got the swarm urge off thier minds for now.

[Benton2569]

Recently I was told that you can leave the screened bottom board (SBB) on all year long. I typically take mine off in late fall and put back on in early spring but am going to leave alone this year.

[peggjam]

IF you can find the queen, take her, and 4-5 frames of brood and bees, place into another hive, then shake in 4-5 frames of additional bees(make sure you don't place a swarm cell into the hive with the queen, or shake a frame that has a swarm cell on it, as it will kill the unhatched queen). Remove them to a new spot. Wait about two weeks, then recombine and let the queens either fight it out, or take one out and place into a nuc. This will make them think they have swarmed, and they will have it out of their system by the time you recombine them.:)

[peggjam]

Recently I was told that you can leave the screened bottom board (SBB) on all year long. I typically take mine off in late fall and put back on in early spring but am going to leave alone this year.

You can do this. I do it quite alot because I forget to close them off in the winter, which can go either way as far as hive survial:).

[tree_entz]

After reading MB's swarm control page (for the 5th time over the last year), I now understand the benefit of doing what your last post suggests.

However, for whatever I've done now, will that suffice? or should I go back there and rearrange everything according to the idea of moving the old queen away from the original location?

I just want to prevent them from swarming. I could check the original hive for more swarm cells, or maybe it's too late? If I pull the queen out now and put into the nuc i created (moving the swarm cell back to the original hive) will the nuc be unlikely to recoginize her? She been away from them since Saturday.

For what its worth, I took a quick peek at the nuc I created, and the swarm cell is now capped, so that hive should be queenright before too long.

IF I HAVE THE OPPURTUNITY, CAN I SWAP OUT THE OLD QUEEN FROM THE ORIGINAL TO THE NUC W/O HER BEING REJECTED? AGAIN IT HAS BEEN SINCE SATURDAY, PLEASE SEE REST OF THREAD. [ASSUME I WILL MOVE THE SWARM CELL BACK TO THE ORIGINAL HIVE].

[tree_entz]

to the top....

[Dan Williamson]

I guess I don't worry about it as much. I try to make roughly equal splits realizing that the foragers will fly back to the original hive if the splits are kept in the same location. As long as enough bees and brood are removed from the hive about to swarm it "should" prevent them from doing so.

Obviously this is not a guarantee that they won't swarm. However, if they still swarm (and they could) you will have lost far fewer bees than had you not made a split.

Nothing is certain. Make a split. If you can't find the queen make sure there is a swarm cell in each. The queenless split will have a queenright hive in short order. Whichever split has the queen should see the q-cells torn down pretty quickly. However, I have seen the queen cell hatch and replace the orginal queen but not often.

I tend to split them pretty hard when they are about to swarm. I've broken them up into 6 or more splits and as little as 2. I've never had one swarm after I split.

[tree_entz]

thanks a bunch. That puts me at ease a bit. I guess I didnt split that hard, but I really did open up the brood nest. Only problem is I concentrated on capped brood and not open brood. I'm having a hard time figuring out why removing open brood is more imporant.

I may just let things go for now. Weather depending, I might rearrange things a bit. My biggest problem is I am still unsure if I put the old queen in the nuc NOW that she'll be rejected. I wish I knew that. She's been away from these nurse bees for almost 4 days. But again, maybe i'm in the clear anyway.

[Michael Bush]

>I'm having a hard time figuring out why removing open brood is more imporant.

So that you free up foragers to get a better honey crop.

[CWBees]

I have made the mistake of removing queen cells from a hive not realizing they already swarmed and the queen was gone. However I was not looking to destroy the queen cells but have them emerge outside the hive thinking it would prevent a swarm so when I had a queen emerge I made the original hive queenright again realizing my mistake. Best to follow the advice above. In future if I thought a hive was determined to swarm I would split the hive. However I really need to get better at swarm control. I lost about 4 or more swarm already this year.