My Swarmy Queens

[Jen]

Interesting turn of events here in my bee queendom    The two hives that have the replaced queens are doing swimmingly   

The other two hives with swarmy queens, one in which the new introduced queen was assassinated, are going great guns.

These are pics from the swarmy queen hives, plenty of wax pulling, eggs, larvae, capped brood of all ages, two empty polished queen cups


Found one swarmy queen


So in fact I still have two swarmy hives that have settled right down to business. There is no sign of future swarming. I'm watching them closely, once a week, to make sure there is plenty of room to expand. It's slow going tho with not much flo so far, dry dry dry ~

[riverbee]

jen, awesome photo of the queen!

[Jen]

Thanks Riv - what do you think about these original queens and future swarming problems?

[pistolpete]

Jen, do you know when the honey flows are in your area?  Once your flows are over, you could play with re-queening these hives.   You could de-queen, wait 6 days, destroy all q-cells in the hive, then introduce a frame with eggs from one of your new queens.    You could also remove the swarmy queen and do a newspaper combine with one of the "new" hives.

Chances are reasonably good that they're done swarming for the year, especially since they're now young queens with strong pheromones. But you never really know and it's reasonable to assume they'll be up to their old tricks next spring. 

[Barbarian]

I am not up to speed with events at your beeyard. I gather from the number of your posts that life has been hectic. That's in the past. No need to dwell on it as a reply to me.

Although your queens from the swarmy stock are behaving well now, there is no guarantee that there won't be a repetition of the swarmy period. I think I would make plans to replace the swarmy stock queens using eggs from your new introduced queens. If you plan things right, there could be only a small loss of brood rearing,

Thank you PP. Your reply came as I was typing mine.

[Jen]

Pete ""Jen, do you know when the honey flows are in your area?  Once your flows are over, you could play with re-queening these hives. "'

     No, not really. This is the first year I've been trying to keep a log of my hive events. I do have a bee guru in this area that would help me with that flo info. Thanks for reminding me to do that 

     That's what I'm afraid of is that these two swarmy hives will start their wanderlust business in March of next year again. Want to avoid that for sure.

Barbarian - would you do that during the flo season, or wait until that has setteled down?

[apisbees]

I would wait till the hives have had a chance to build up and have lots of brood in the hive 10 plus good frames of brood and before the middle of July for them to raise their own. End of July if a mature cell is added to a de-queened hive. Or a queen could be added any time as you would only loose a few days of egg laying.

[Jen]

Thanks Apis! That gives me a map. We finally have another flo going on right now, sure don't want to interupt that, I'll keep a an eye on it.

I'm half tempted to add a new queen cause they come marked, I sure appreciate it when their marked 

[riverbee]

i would agree with apis on waiting, but i would also say, leave well enough alone on requeening, see how she does, unless the hives become problematic or another adventure in swarm behavior starts, but that's just me, i don't try to fix something unless it's broken, or tinker with a good laying queen and a productive hive. sometimes when we think we are fixing a problem it backfires.....or better yet fix it til it is broken.........

that's just me, that's just my philosophy....

don't get me wrong, some good ideas to be mindful of jen, and yes before next march, a plan.

[Jen]

Riv and Apis - this is the way I'm leaning at the moment. I'm impressed with this queen. Because this swarm came at the very end of my swarm problem, I can't help think that maybe this queen got mated with more mature drones ~ crossing my fingeres and enjoying break 

[riverbee]

i know jen, you have done so well under the circumstances, just take the well deserved break and enjoy your bees right now!!! ♥♥♥