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This will be my 3rd year keeping bees. I started with 2 hives the first year, added a package the beginning of the 2nd year, (last year) and ended with 9 hives from collecting swarms, doing a cutout and making a few splits. So, I overwintered 9 hives, all queens and hives made it throughout the winter perfectly. I checked the hives while they were building up this spring and checker boarded all but 2 of them. (2 queens disappeared) The 2 queens were already laying well (IMO) so the bees were able to raise new queens.
Now to the best part. I have never been too interested in honey, I just love bees and watching them and photographing them. How much honey I harvested was of no importance and this made me happy considering I hadn't lost a hive in my 3 seasons. This year I decided to go for broke and see how much honey I could get from them, seeing that I had so many healthy overwintered hives. You know what happens next, almost every hive I have, has swarmed except the 2 that lost queens early on. I have caught 2 of the swarms, and one is in one of my trees right now, about 30 feet up.
Im thinking of combing the 2 that are rebuilding from queen losses, taking that extra queen and putting it in one of the swarm hives and putting the swarms I caught back into other hives that swarmed to get a better honey crop. My issue is, I now have 5 hives with virgin queens, some have queen cells and virgin queens, etc and I'm worried about trying to put good laying queens in them. If I miss a virgin queen or one is on a mating flight and I put a mated caged queen in the hive, will the bees kill the virgin ? Or will they release and then kill the mated queen ? I want to do this ASAP because the honey flow is starting here in middle TN as we speak.
Any help, encouragement or bashing for not checker boarding and finding swarm cells in time will be appreciated.
Now to the best part. I have never been too interested in honey, I just love bees and watching them and photographing them. How much honey I harvested was of no importance and this made me happy considering I hadn't lost a hive in my 3 seasons. This year I decided to go for broke and see how much honey I could get from them, seeing that I had so many healthy overwintered hives. You know what happens next, almost every hive I have, has swarmed except the 2 that lost queens early on. I have caught 2 of the swarms, and one is in one of my trees right now, about 30 feet up.
Im thinking of combing the 2 that are rebuilding from queen losses, taking that extra queen and putting it in one of the swarm hives and putting the swarms I caught back into other hives that swarmed to get a better honey crop. My issue is, I now have 5 hives with virgin queens, some have queen cells and virgin queens, etc and I'm worried about trying to put good laying queens in them. If I miss a virgin queen or one is on a mating flight and I put a mated caged queen in the hive, will the bees kill the virgin ? Or will they release and then kill the mated queen ? I want to do this ASAP because the honey flow is starting here in middle TN as we speak.
Any help, encouragement or bashing for not checker boarding and finding swarm cells in time will be appreciated.