Knowledgebase
Honeybee Colony split #866252
Asked April 29, 2024, 9:37 AM EDT
Ionia County Michigan
Expert Response
Good job catching that your colonies were building swarm cells in time find queens and split the colonies.
Queens have a pupal development stage of about 8 days, so given that you found cells close to being capped, you should be able to predict approximately when new queens will emerge.
Most beekeepers try to introduce caged, mated queens within 24 hours (or sometimes at least within 48 hours) of the colony being queenless. Your chances of the colony rejecting the mated queens may increase if they are queenless for a longer period of time.
If you decide to introduce mated queens, you should remove all queen cells. It can be easy to miss queen cells, so you'll want to shake bees off of the frames to look for them. Queens can mark queen cells for the workers to remove, but an introduced queen may not be released in time or may miss one.
Letting your colonies requeen with the swarm cells seems like the easiest option. Swarm cells usually produce good quality queens because the queens develop with great nutrition and in large cells. Colonies can swarm with virgin queens as they emerge, so I'd be inclined to leave just a couple of queen cells per hive. You shouldn't shake bees off the frames with the queen cells that you leave, since shaking may damage developing queens.
Happy beekeeping!
It's common for bees to store nectar in the broodnest when they aren't queenright. Bees will move stored nectar outside of the broodnest when they have a new queen. It's also common for bees to be slow to draw new comb when they aren't queenright.
So... one of the hives I split swarmed. I was able to witness it happening. It was too soon for there to have been a new mated queen. The timing works out to where they may have swarmed with a virgin queen. Highly unlikely, but is it possible they can swarm without a queen?
Colonies can swarm with virgin queens.
A colony can start to swarm without a queen, but the swarm normally returns to the hive if the queen does not leave with the swarm.
I caught them on a branch in my yard Sunday and have them in a box. I figure I will leave them alone for a while, so far they seem to be sticking around. It was a large swarm and they are taking up every inch of a full deep.
I suggest giving the swarm another box since it's full.
I only had 1 frame of drawn comb to give them, the rest is foundation.
That's fine; swarms are usually quick to draw comb.
If I can prove them to be queenright I would consider selling them since I don't care to have more than 4-5 colonies.
There are still capped queen cells in the hive that swarmed, not very good looking ones. There were capped queen cells when I split them 2 weeks ago so maybe they made new ones since then? My concern is they aren't queenright and their replacement queens won't turn out well. Destroy all the queen cells and introduce a mated queen? Let them be and raise their own possibly weak queen? I'm in my second season and at a loss right now! lol
Normally queens raised under swarming conditions are good queens. If the colony doesn't end up with a good laying queen, you can combine it with the queenright swarm colony.
If you decide to destroy all the queen cells and introduce a mated queen, you run the risk that a new queen has already emerged and that the colony won't accept the mated queen you introduce.
I now have concerns the other hive I split plans to swarm. Both of the colonies currently have 2 supers on top with the bottom supers mostly full of nectar/honey. The top supers are still mostly empty drawn comb.
You can check if the colony plans to swarm by opening the hive and carefully looking for queen cells.
You can try reversing the honey supers so there is empty drawn comb immediately over the brood nest.