Jen's swarm is swarming #7 or 8 or I dunno

[Jen]

What would happen if I just closed the entrance? Would a swarm happen if there were No Queen?

UPDATE

Swarm was happening so I just went and shut the D___ Door!




After I shut the door, most of the bees outside slowed down and came back to the entrance, so I opened up the entrance reducer and they went back in.


Now there is a couple of handfuls that are not wanting to go back in. Too bad I shut the door again.


This is the same swarm that swarmed three days ago.

Scott- I don't know if this is a mating flight... I've asked around and the general consensus says that the queen leaves the hive and goes to where the drones are flying around. And that she doesn't take 20,000 bees with her. I dunno, just don't know...

[LazyBkpr]

usually a swarm happens when there are queen cells and they have PLANS for a queen, so the old one leaves.
   I cant even guess what is going on, it confounds even my over active imagination...

   Have I mentioned the story about going over to deal with my buddies mean hive, and seeing the torches sitting a few feet from the hive with the torch tip stuck in the entrance???

[barry42001]

No......not another swarm,  A swarm is always headed by a queen, she might will not be able to keep up with the swarm, and pull up short somewhere or fall around in the grass, they almost always start with a queen. once in a great while she decides to go back inside and she's not going to leave and goes back in as the swarm issues, in which case the swarm comes back home. Didn't you recently ( within last 8 day ) go through your hives? The queen cells would have been visible then...

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[Perry]

Jen, are you sure you are not mistaking orientation flights for swarming? That first pic looks more like that than a swarm. Those bees are all facing the hive, whereas swarms take off in high circular type patterns.

[Jen]

This swarm just swarmed 3 days ago. I caught it and hived it, and it started to swarm again today.

When I was gathering up this swarm I spotted the queen, caught her gently in my hands and placed her in the bin with the rest of the bees, hubby saw her too. That evening we were going thru the bin and hiving the swarm, it takes time cause you have to be careful of the debri and branches and such, we found the queen dead on the bottom of the bin. But we kept looking earnestly for a possible second queen. Nothing showed up.

When we finished with the hiving, we put a queen excluded under the medium where the swarm is living.... and fleeing... why would they swarm, unless a second queen squeeked thru the excluder....  ??

I've got a sick feeling in my belly that I'm going to get these new queens installed and a few days from now all three hives are going to take off on the same day.

I'm going to go ahead and process with de-queening the hives tonight so I can leave the hives queenless for 24 hours. Wish me luck in finding all queen stuff for the ridding ~

I need a tanqueray martini



 

[Jen]

Hi Perry, All the swarms that I have witnessed all start the same way. The bees start climbing and crawling out the top of the entrance and crawl/walk up the front of the hive, more and then more bees walking up the face of the hive. Then some are in the air facing the hive and roving around just like an orientation. Then the bees start boiling out onto the porch. I just stopped this one short, so it doesn't look like the usual amount that hit the sky.

This time, I walked up and closed up the entrance reducers. There were so many bees on the inside pushing to get out that I had to put another board against the entrance reducers to hold them in.

Crazy!
 

[barry42001]

You gotta get in there and secure those queens, and really look for swarm cells. this time you don't have to be gentle I would just mush them, and eliminate those genetics from your colonies. you don't need Virgin Queens hatching out and killing one of your Queens you just bought. Hunt those old queens and destroy them, and all queen cells.

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[LazyBkpr]

   

    They are swarming right? They are not trying to abscond? Are there queen cells??
   No, it doesnt matter, you HAVE queens.   
  If anyone else has a better idea than this please speak up.. I am grasping at straws here...
   I can only go by the information I have but;
   If I was in your shoes;

   I would go through this hive, frame by frame, shaking the bees off into a shaker box. Inspect every frame, every inch of every frame, I would poke remove anything I thought might BE a queen cell, might have BEEN a queen cell, and might ever BE a queen cell...  The shaker box is to make sure you get the queen, or QUEENS that may be in there.
   When I finished the last frame I would reassemble the hive, minus those queens, and wait the amount of time you have decided upon., and then install the new queen cages in the method you have decided upon.

   At this point, you are absolutely certain there are no cells, and no queens left in the hives, other than the one you have just installed...
   By Gosh, by God or by Golly they have a new well mated queen, that will, with luck, calm them down long enough to replace all of those bees with her own in the next six weeks or so....


   Thats the best I can do to insure that mess is as straight as possible....


    Eidt... Barry posted while I was typing...   same principle there, get those old genetics OUT of the hives.

[Jen]

What is a shaker box?

How does an abscond look different than a swarm?

Perry, just occured to me, it couldn't have been an orientation flight because this hive started with virtually all brand new frames and wax, there wouldn't have been any brood to hatch out.

Soo many facets to this crazy puzzle.

Barry, that's what i'm afraid of is that a virgin queen is going to eat my new queen.

We are getting it together as we speak. It's 7:30. We're bring in the mother hive into the garage first. If you don't hear from me in a couple of days, I've hurled myself off of a cliff before the heart attack gets me ~

Thanks for all of your support everyone ~ kisshug patpatpat

[LazyBkpr]

LOL, no cliffs for you missy!!!

   shaker box is just a hive body with an excluder  under it. Put this over another hive body, preferably with frames so the bees will go through the excluder down into the frames. the queen, or queens will get trapped above the excluder and make finding/catching them easier.
   Bees absconding just means they have decided to leave the hive because they didnt like it for one reason or another, and. The only time I saw it happen I thought it was a swarm. These bees had only been in the box two days, they did not draw comb on anything. They just up and left in a whirling mass of flying bees. We watched them, hoping they landed in one of the nearby trees, but they didn't, they zoomed off over the treetops and vanished forever.
   My greatest confusion is usually seeing the bees boiling about the front of the hive and Thinking swarm, the advantage is usually in knowing thats a new virgin queen in hive number nine, so shes likely going on a mating flight...

[Jen]

OKay, yeah I know what the shaker box is now, didn't know that is what it was called. Been doing that with these swarms. Be back later ~

[barry42001]

Good luck, happy hunting

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