[AstroBee]

My hive swarmed today. I happened to walk out to the yard and saw the air thick with bees. The swarm settled under the hive stand of main hive. I was able to capture the swarm (with the queen) and put them in a hive body with foundation right next to the original hive. The queen appears to be healthy. The strange thing is that about 30 minutes later the worker bees abandoned the queen. Now I have a queen and no swarm! Not knowing exactly what to do, I decided to place the queen above the original hive with a queen excluder? I’m still not sure if this was the right thing to do. Please help!

Thanks.

 

[Michael Bush]

You can put the queen above and see if they'll accept both queens. You could also shake some nurse bees from a couple of brood nests and use them to start a shaken swarm with her. It's up to you. What do you want to end up with? A two queen hive? A split? Just your original hive with a fresh youn queen?

 

[AstroBee]

Michael,

Thanks for the input. I'm somewhat unsure as to what I want. I guess I could remove the old queen and have my original hive back as you suggested. I'm pretty new to beekeeping so my experience is not great and I only have two hives, one that I started last year (the one that swarmed today), and one that I started in March of this year from a package. I've recently built enough components to start a new hive, so a split is a possibility (considering hardware only). I'm not sure that I have enough surplus nurse bees (or the experience) to pull off the split. Another consideration is that the tulip popular flow is just weeks away and I was really looking forward to having a strong hive during that period. What would be involved with running a two-queen hive??

All input welcome.

Thank again.

 

[Michael Bush]

If you have the old queen in the bottom boxes with an excluder above her and a super and then another excluder with the old queen above then you already HAVE a two queen hive if the bees accept the situation, which they probably will, since it's their old queen. All you have to do is let them from that point. The tricky part of running a two queen hive, besides all the lifting and having a hive so populous that it's scary, is getting them to accept and not kill the second queen. I think you've already done that.

 

[AstroBee]

Checked the status of the old queen last night and found her by herself in the box above the excluder. There were a few worker bees with her, perhaps 5-10 bees total. I removed the hive body she was in and put her in a queen cage. Give her some honey, which she took eagerly, and now have her in the house in a dark room. I'm not sure what I should do now. I guess a split is still an option, but I now question this queen's ability to hold together a colony.

Any suggestions?

 

[Michael Bush]

I wonder about only 5 to 15 bees with her. You may be right, she may not be able to hold a colony together.

 

[AstroBee]

Yeah, its strange because the hive is only about a year old and I know for sure she's not the original queen (original was clipped and marked), so that puts her less than a year old. It seems odd that such a young queen would be so "unappealing". I guess that unless I can find a creative use for her she'll be put in solution and used as swarm lure.