[michos]

Some of you might remember a week ago, I caught a swarm that came out of my hive and made the silly misinformed decision to dump the swarm back into the original hive. Once I learned that this is simply something you don't do, I found the queen and made a split. Now I have two hives. I left queen cells in the old hive and it seems to be doing just fine right now. The new hive with the old queen seems to be doing well too. I just went outside, however, and saw that I have a swarm of bees about 20ft from my hives right in my neighbors yard. I just checked and found that the new hive is still intact with the queen in place. upon quick inspection, I found that the old hive...may be a little light of bees but its pretty hard to tell. Since I took the old queen out of the hive and made a split, essentially making the old hive queenless for a couple of weeks, and the new hive definitely still has the queen, is there any chance/way that the swarm in my neighbors yard could be mine or is there basically no way this is possible? I assume that freshly hatched queens never swarm, correct?

Thanks!

 

[jonathan]

The trigger for a swarm is usually the presence of a sealed queen cell.
If you leave behind 4 queen cells you could potentially get three cast swarms as each emerging virgin leaves with some of the flying bees.

 

[michos]

The trigger for a swarm is usually the presence of a sealed queen cell.
If you leave behind 4 queen cells you could potentially get three cast swarms as each emerging virgin leaves with some of the flying bees.

Im really confused then...Ive always been told to NOT destroy the queen cells so that they can create a new queen. Am I supposed to destroy all but one?

 

[JRG13]

Typically you want to leave 2-3 but it's always a gamble. I'm not sure how it pans out that secondary and tertiary swarms are cast. Some hives will swarm themselves to nothing...

 

[michos]

Oy...and here I was thinking I was done dealing with swarming for the year. I counted a minimum of 3 queen cells after the first swarm. Possibly 4 or 5. Is there anything I can do now to help keep them from swarming yet again or do I just have to sit back and hope they don't?

 

[dleemc1]

wrong