I had a very strong hive coming out of Winter, I could not locate the queen but I went ahead and added a second brood box on April 22nd, I put in new frames and foundation on 28th April they had drawn 5 frames in the top box, I continued feeding heavily to encourage them, Still no sign of the Queen but by the 5th May she was in the top brood box laying well still no sign of her, this was getting dodgy. But I kept going by the 17th of May I decided I had better locate her so placed a queen excluder between the two boxs and couple of days later confirmed she was now isolated in the top box and going strong, On 20th May I now had 24 frames in both boxs the bottom box had 5 frames of sealed brood and one unsealed QC and 7 frames of stores while the top box had 8 frames of brood two of stores and two frames full drawn, I had planned on Splitting the hive on 24rd but at 2.45pm a huge swarm issued from the hive as I was observing it, this is not good, anyway they landed very close by which I thought strange and they were on the ground, 30 minutes later they returned to the hive and things seemed to settle down, so I left well enough alone. (Reason I had to reopen a walled garden due to tour)
it appears the queen was trapped in the top boox and could not leave with the swarm so I got back in early the following day, Found the Queen (Dont know how just lucky so many bees) placed her in a Nuc, split the hive into two seperate brood boxes with sealed queen cells, and removed two Nucs from it and a sealed queen cell for an Apidea. Lesson here dont go messing with huge numbers of bees in public area.
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