Hive Swarmed on me...

[MWillard]

I was on my deck this morning and noticed a loud buzzing noise over by my two hives. It was much louder than normal activity, so I looked up in the tree and one of my hives has swarmed and they were clusted on a branch about 35' up in the air. Unfortunately it is out of reach for me to capture.

I checked both hive to see if I coulf figure out which one swarmed. Hive #1 didn't have any queen cells. Hive #2 had two fully capped queen cells on two frames and two queen cups being created with royal jelly in them. The new queens haven't hatched yet.

Is this typical that that a colony will swarm before a new queen hatches out? The cells were on the sides of comb, not at the bottom of the frames. I'm assuming these are supercedure cells.

Is it common for a hive to swarm with supercedure cells?

[Ardilla]

It is typical for the swarm to leave before the virgin queens emerge.

The location of the queen cells isn't a hard and fast rule for supercedure vs. swarm. Swarm cells can be in the middle of frames, although they tend to be at the bottom.

...and you won't have a laying queen for a couple weeks from now.