I over-wintered a hive that had maybe a hundred bees in it. I would normally have combined them with another hive but there were so few I thought I'd give the young queen a chance. Two weeks ago I noticed a good number of foraging bees and simply dropped a deep with drawn comb onto the honey super they were living in. This weekend I was installing a few packages when I noticed a cloud of bees. I thought that I had some how botched one of the installations. To my surprise it was my over-wintered hive swarming.
After capturing the swarm I went back to the baby hive and found no less than six empty swarm cells, four fully developed swarm cells and at least that number of immature swarm cells. I didn't see a new queen but I'm pretty search-challenged with immature queens so I wasn't surprised.
Question 1: Why so many swarm cells at such different ages?
Question 2: Should I let them duke it out and hope that the winner gets inseminated? (As opposed to what I don't know.)
Question 3: If there's a new fertile queen, will she kill all of the unborn rivals?
Thank you.
After capturing the swarm I went back to the baby hive and found no less than six empty swarm cells, four fully developed swarm cells and at least that number of immature swarm cells. I didn't see a new queen but I'm pretty search-challenged with immature queens so I wasn't surprised.
Question 1: Why so many swarm cells at such different ages?
Question 2: Should I let them duke it out and hope that the winner gets inseminated? (As opposed to what I don't know.)
Question 3: If there's a new fertile queen, will she kill all of the unborn rivals?
Thank you.