[John Scifres]

Your thoughts and advice are greatly appreciated.

My lone hive swarmed last weekend. I got lucky and caught the swarm and they seem to be sticking around. I inspected the first hive on Saturday after catching the swarm and found a lot of bees still in there. There was quite a lot of capped and uncapped brood and plenty of stores. It is 2 deeps. Most all of the frames were drawn out and full. I added a honey super. I robbed one frame of capped and one frame of uncapped brood and two frames of food and put in the swarm hive.

There were 15 or more swarm cells, a few of which were destroyed when I removed the frame as they were tied to the lower chamber. 2 or 3 were empty. The rest were capped. I didn't do anything other than inspect. Should I or can I go back in and take some of the capped queen cells out to prevent afterswarms? Or is there anything else I should do?

Thanks for all the help.

Here's a video of the swarm capture:

 

[David LaFerney]

My opinion is that you should. I would remove all cells except for on one frame - or at least a couple of adjacent frames. A big strong hive with a bunch of swarm cells will sometimes swarm to oblivion.

If the swarm you caught is successful, in a couple of weeks I would give the original hive a frame of brood from it for good measure.

 

[Dave Burrup]

I agree with David. We had our strongest hive one year swarm to oblivion because I did not reduce the queen cells. The books tell you that the first virgin to emerge will go around and kill all of the other cells. Bees do not read text books, and in at least some cases, most of the queen cells will emerge and lead a virgin swarm. In our case what was left was not a viable hive.
Dave

 

[David LaFerney]

I've had the exact same experience. I wonder why these fables keep getting passed around.

 

[John Scifres]

I assume when you say to give the original hive a frame of brood it is to give them the raw materials to make a new queen in case the first try isn't successful? That and to get some new bees in there since none have been getting made since the swarm? Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

[David LaFerney]

to give them the raw materials to make a new queen in case the first try isn't successful

And to find out if they are already queenright or not - if they make cells after being queenless for 2 weeks in my area you have to do something else or they will be likely to be overcome by hive beetles before another queen can be made.

 

[John Scifres]

Thanks again. Very helpful.

 

[John Scifres]

Well I took all but 4, maybe 5 of the swarm cells out. There was a total of about 14 cells. Most of them were uncapped and had larva in them. They were mostly on 3 frames. I took 2 of those and left 4 or 5 viable cells and put them in a nuc. We'll see how it goes. Thanks again for the help.