[Cub]

I just did my 19th or 20th cutout, and found 3 queens.

I captured a swarm very close to where this cutout hive is, about a week and a half ago. I assume the swarm came from this hive, but the property owner didn't know the original hive was there at the time. Is it possible that the cutout took place on the exact day that all the new queens hatched and they just haven't battled it out yet? In reading, I would have thought only one would emerge and then kill the others before they emerged. How common is this? Can I just take each queen and make three nucs? During the cutout, the bees were extremely spread out and seemed disorganized. Even after putting all three queens in the hive box, they didn't really start using it until the next day. I am picking them up tonight, so hopefully, they are all at home in the super and ready for new surroundings.

Any thoughts?

 

[stan.vick]

I'm certainly no expert, but my guess is that the old queen left with the swarm and those three queens could have produced after swarms, the bees not paying much notice of the queens indicates they are not mated.

 

[Cub]

I placed each queen in a nuc with about a third of the vacced up bees per box. Two of them were in queen clips, and the other was released. The one I released seemed to be the one the workers preferred. All of the nucs had drawn comb.

 

[WilMorris]

Very interesting. Would love to hear the results.

 

[odfrank]

A few weeks ago I had a Warre hive swarm.

1 queen dead on the vacuum floor
1 queens dead in front of the hive day 1
2 dead queens in front of the hive day 2
2 dead queens in front of the hive day 3
1 queen took over original hive
1 queen in took over in the swarm

And those were only the ones I spotted.