I found a swarm the day after I installed a package of bees. The swarm was about the same size as the package.
At first the swarm was really active and started bring back pollen right away. I tried to feed them at first but they would not take it.
Now, one month later the swarm has about 1/4 the activity as the package.
Everything looks OK inside the hive, but they are building more slowly then the package.
What can I do to help these bees?
I checked the swarm for mites and found 10 Varroa mites on the board in a 24 hour period.
Is this too many?
From what I have ssne, A swarm will have a few days it just goes gang busters. will draw comb like mad and fill much fo that comb with the nectar honey pollen or whatever. then they go into a lull. Often in order to supersede their queen. this results in about a 4 week nothing is going on period. then they start up again is they are any good. if not forget it. they can hang on forever as a fist size clump of bees if they want to.
The only way I see around this is to capture a swarm wait one week. catch the queen and replace her with a mated queen. remove all queen cells if they have been started. wait another week and check for queen cells again. keep this up until the bees give up the idea of supersedure. A mated queen being able to lay for a month could and should have a 5 frame box expanded to 10 fraems minimum and more likely already working on a second box. I have a swarm in a 5 frame box that is a month old. it is still in 5 frames due to the bees superseding their queen right off the bat. brood is just now starting to appear in this hive.
Thanks for the replies.
I went back in today and found the whole bottom box full of brood, pollen and some capped honey.
All the bees where packed really tight all over the brood. I think I saw some baby bees too.
There seems to be more activity at the entrance now.
I started all my hives last year from swarms. All did real well and built up nicely. I actually was able to collect some honey as well. One hive did go queenless this year... it was a package.
I have pretty good luck with swarms although I often see the queen superseded quite quickly. That's assuming an early swarm. If they don't replace the queen and when I don't replace the queen, any colony started from a swarm that looks slow going into the winter gets combined with another colony. I always appreciate the comb that a swarm makes so they're useful overall no matter whether they add to a colony or stay independent on their own.
Swarms usually go crazy at first, building up as fast as they can. Then when the queen starts laying in all the open comb the swarm loses some of their workforce to stay and care for the brood. Once the first round of brood hatches they should go back to heavy foraging.
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