likely swarm and new queen cell

[schmism]

so it would seem my east hive swarmed on me.

I had seen a marked drop off in the hive activity and it was brutally hot last week so i didnt mess with the hives.

Today's check found no capped brood, no larva. there were a few capped drone cells left which were being attended to by the last few workers.

There is a nice capped queen cell hanging off the bottom.

So i moved 2 frames of brood (larva, capped etc) with nurse bees from the west hive over (made shure to extra check for west queen)

Ive read, capped queen cell at day 7-8, emerge at 15-17 and new eggs ~24 days.

based on seeing very few if any capped workers does that help pin down when my new queen will emerge and i can expect new eggs?

the good news is the west hive is very strong. The top super is almost 100% capped honey. only the bottom few inches of 6-8 of the frames are uncapped. The queen is having fun laying all up in the second super but now with the extra space below from the empty frames from the east hive she may move back downstairs.

The east hive does have a fair amount of capped honey but the second super on the top is only about half done.

whats your opinion on the long term survivability of the east hive at this point? (should i be worried or is it a non issue with good beek management at this point still)

[schmism]

pulled the queen cell pic off the camera today

[Michael Bush]

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm

A frame of open brood and eggs is always good insurance, but you need some patience. From a capped cell it could be eight days to emergence and likely two to three weeks before you have a laying queen after that.