Secondary swarms.

[Perry]

Something interesting of note.
When I was in one of my yards 2 days ago I had a hive that was requeening itself throw a swarm. I stood back and just enjoyed the moment and settled in to watch where they landed.
When I go to my yards I always keep and eye out for anything in the trees as I pull in, and have developed a routine where I look based on previous experience. It often involves a route I walk, maybe 100' or so around the perimeter of the yard. Experience has taught me this is how far swarms usually go.
But the swarm I was watching stayed airborne for a surprising amount of time, and actually ended up about twice the distance I would normally expect before they finally settled in. This year more than previous, I have been seeing some of the hives I have pulled nucs out of due to swarm preps, throw swarms with the virgins who hatch out. It dawned on me that these virgins are quite capable of flight, much more so than an adult queen who has not left the hive in at least a year and is perhaps a lot heavier.
Guess I may have to alter the routine.

[Lburou]

That sounds like experience talking Perry.  How many queen cells do you leave in a hive after you pull the split out? 

[Perry]

I have been leaving 2 or sometimes 3, but that doesn't seem to be slowing down the cast swarming. Even with only 2 cells the fight or flight response is working against me. 

[Jen]

Me too Perry, for me the swarming is routine and I love it! But this year, the secondary swarms have been hard to keep up with. I have 2 hives and 9 nucs now. One of my hives has swarmed to depletion. I was going thru it and wasn't surprised at how empty of worker bees there was, maybe a frames worth of workers, and A Whole Lot Of Drones roaming around. I figure no queen. But I got into the bottom box and low and behold there she was nice big and healthy, my pink mark in place. I can't figure out why they didn't slim her down and take her with the last swarm. This year I have more questions for sure.