I have a strong colony that has about 12 uncapped swarm cells( with jelly) in the second box and spotty brood in the main lower brood chamber. I have a mated queen coming from a supplier on the 14th. Should I remove all the swarm cells and introduce the queen when it gets here?
Should I remove swarm cells and requeen
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How strong are you talking (number of frames with brood) ? If it were me i would allow them to continue. When the cells are capped I would split. With 12 you could in theory make 12 new hives. But I would not go that far unless you have other hives to take resources from. If you have 8 frames of brood I personally would make 4 hives out of this one if you have no other hives. Giving each split a couple cells. Then you still have a mated queen to make another split, or requeen with.
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Is the queen ordered to replace the current queen, or is it for a split?
If they are that far along on queen cells and there are larvae in the cells they may have already made the decision to swarm. If the brood frames are spotty with a lot of nectar backfilled brood cells, it might be too late to change their mind.
If that appears to be what you have I would do a split right now. Make sure the queen with a smaller split is moved to the new location and leave all the frames with queen cells at the old location, cutting out all but a few queen cells.
The split at the original location will produce a new queen and hopefully the split with the old queen will not swarm. You have another 9 days until your queen shows up, so there is time to evaluate where you stand before she arrives.
If they are that far along on queen cells and there are larvae in the cells they may have already made the decision to swarm. If the brood frames are spotty with a lot of nectar backfilled brood cells, it might be too late to change their mind.
If that appears to be what you have I would do a split right now. Make sure the queen with a smaller split is moved to the new location and leave all the frames with queen cells at the old location, cutting out all but a few queen cells.
The split at the original location will produce a new queen and hopefully the split with the old queen will not swarm. You have another 9 days until your queen shows up, so there is time to evaluate where you stand before she arrives.
The brood pattern is really very sporadic and the queen has laid a lot of drone brood two boxes up and totally skipped a box in between. I have 8 frames of brood but again they are sporadic. I don't have the colonies to borrow honey frames from for splits with the right size frames.
originally I was gonna intended her for a split on another colony but I have already split that colony with swarm cells so she will be available for a split with this colony. I could not see larvae although they may be submerged in the jelly. Would they be under the jelly or on top?
They are backfilling the brood with pollen
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