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Author Topic: Hope I did the right thing.  (Read 4492 times)

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Offline Yankee11

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Hope I did the right thing.
« on: May 04, 2014, 12:17:09 am »
Went to check a out yard today. Driving up to the hives I could see the front of one of the hives covered in bees. The whole front of the  2 deeps was black.

I know they were getting ready to swarm. I had a couple of nuc boxes in the truck. I grabbed my smoker and smoked them back inside the hive. Then went in searching. Found a capped queen cell and an one open at the bottom in top box. Went to bottom box. Found another capped queen cell and it was hatching. removed that qcell and put her in a container.

Now, next I found a queen, and she was running around like she was on fire. Not sure I've ever seen a queen run around like that. I put that frame in a nuc box and then put about 2 or 3 more frames with the bees in it with her. Closed it up.

looked a little more, found another queen moving around, moving like a virgin queen, just a little nervous like, and right before I saw her I could hear piping. I then found another open at bottom qcell. I put this queen in the other nuc with one more frame of bees.

I hope I made this hive think it swarmed and I left it 1 closed queen cell and I still didn't account for one of the open qcells.

Very crowded hive so I know it hadn't swarmed yet but boy was it fixing to. After I closed it back up the front entrance looked normal. I will go back and check for the closed qcell I left. I left plenty of bees to make honey.

My head was spinning there for a while. Think I stopped them?


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Offline LazyBkpr

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Re: Hope I did the right thing.
« Reply #1 on: May 04, 2014, 12:39:24 am »
I think you just made the best attempt at stopping them humanly possible.
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Offline Jen

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Re: Hope I did the right thing.
« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2014, 12:48:47 am »
I would think so Yankee. But when my bees swarm it's a different look on the front of the hive box than your's being black on the front. The two times that my bees turned around and came back... that's when the front looked black with bees.
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Offline tbonekel

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Re: Hope I did the right thing.
« Reply #3 on: May 04, 2014, 08:53:14 am »
Man, there is a lot going on there! Everything you did sounds like it makes sense to me.
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Offline Yankee11

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Re: Hope I did the right thing.
« Reply #4 on: May 04, 2014, 10:21:26 am »
It could be that they just came back idk.

And yes, it was a lot going on. queens popping out everywhere. I just tried to remove enough bees and both queens so hopefully they think they swarmed.
I left one capped queen cell. I was scared to leave a queen thinking they would go.

So now, I will just keep a close eye and make sure they get a mated queen over the next 10 days.

Don't know if it mattered buy I took most of the bees from the lower box. Thinking those were the ones getting ready to go.
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