Hello, first post from me. This post is going to ramble a bit so bear with me. I am sure somebody has posted a similar question but I am having a hard time finding an answer. I have a hive that I started last year from a package. The hive was two deeps over the winter. When I did a full inspection around the first of April I found that they were doing really well. Still lots of capped honey, eggs and brood at various stages. So I threw on a super from last year, that was about half drawn, hoping they would get it drawn out before they needed it. Well as the last couple weeks progressed they became very active, clinging to the outside of the hive during the day and bearding well in to the night. Last Friday the neighbor called and told me there was a swarm in his yard so I caught that and put it in an empty box. Im assuming that the swarm I caught came from my hive. I wasn't able to find a queen yet(my original was marked). Since then there was not as much activity outside of the original hive. I did another full inspection this evening to find that the bees temperament has gotten calmer and there are no eggs or uncapped brood. Only a few capped brood and drones. The workers have begun to fill both deeps completely with nectar, there are very few empty cells left on any of the frames. There was also a dozen or so queen cells. Upon reading various things I decided to check all the queen cells to see what stage they are at. I checked all of them and they were all empty except for the last one. It had a mature queen ready to go. So I carefully let her crawl down one of the frames and put the hive back together. They haven't really done much with the super I put on a month ago, it is about half drawn(still) and has no capped honey. I put another super on top to give the workers something to do. After all that, my main question is, will the hive be ok at this stage. Will they accept one of the queens that emerged? Will she have any place to lay since they are filling it with honey? Will she have enough time to start laying again and make new bees before the current ones die? I greatly appreciate any responses. Or tips. What should I do? :scratch:
Thanks!
Thanks!