Suprercede or swarm?

[mrpush]

Hi,

I have 2 hives, that have MANY queens cells.

Hive one in a single deep, 1.5 frames still empty on left. 19 total queen cells, 2 on bottom frames, rest on sides.

Few uncapped larva here and there, no eggs spotted. No lots of open cells, most capped brood.

Hive 2 has 9.5 full frames in single deep w 12 total queen cells, 9 bottom and 3 on sides of frames. A little uncapped larva here and there, no eggs spotted.

Not lot of empty cells open mostly capped brood.

I did not spot the queens during the insptections.

It occures to me that hive 2 MAY have had some signs of backfilling.

Are these both swarm prep? Supercedure?

Best action to take?

Some of the queen cells had brownish tips???

Thanks,

MP

[jrbbees]

Let the bees do their thing and breed a queen. Or, if you want more hives. Split them into four hives and let them requeen requeen themselves.
Feeding will help with the production of mew comb if you split.

[Ravenseye]

It might be too late to stop whatever is happening and, if it were me I'd let them do their thing. You need space in those hives is what I think.

[fish_stix]

Did you know that you can add more boxes on top to give the queens more space to lay?

[indypartridge]

To elaborate on the comment made by fish_stix - you should have added a 2nd box when they had about 8 frames filled. They are crowded and preparing to swarm (or may have already swarmed).

With that many queen cells, I'd make splits.

[mrpush]

Thanks all for the input.

I was away and not able to check on them for 2 weeks so this is what I came back to find.

I did find the queen in #1, man was she slimed up for flight.

I demareed that hive to see what happens.

Hive 2 I could not find the queen (they were not marked) so I could not demaree and I may split this one up.

I believe I read of something similar to demaree where you DID NOT need to find the queen? Anyone know of this method?

Finding her can be very time consuming.

Thanks much,

MP

[iwombat]

If they've decided to swarm, you demareed too late. They'll still swarm. About all you can do once they start making queen cells is to split the old queen out and let them raise a new queen. That will more often then not stop an actual swarm from happening.