About to loose a swarm?

[beeanne]

H'mm. Have just been out to hack away at some greenery around the hives. One hive has bees, one is an empty box. Lots and lots of bees in separate tight clusters under the hive floor, on the back of the hive, etc. Making a hissing noise. In the chilly windy rain. This is a hive that swarmed Sunday. It was almost like was about to loose a cast, but at 8pm? In the rain? I could have missed a QC and left extra in there when I checked Sun post-swarm, but obviously as am always perfect this is unlikely

Empty hive next door (where the swarm from first hive was installed - breifly- before they departed Monday afternoon) had a few groups of 20 or so bees in tight clusters under the roof. So maybe 100 or so bees altogether. Nothing in the hive itself though.

Checked entrance to inhabited hive is completely clear and not blocked. Am sure bees cannot get from under roof into hive.

So, am I about to loose yet more bees? What am I doing???

[Jon]

When you lose a swarm the first thing to do is to carefully go through the brood box and leave just one queen cell. Mark the frame this is on. Five days after the swarm left you need to go through the brood box again and remove any additional queen cells which they have made as a virgin will emerge from you chosen cell and likely leave with a cast swarm leaving behind one of the smaller emergency cells.

When you house a swarm, the scout bees may already have chosen the new home which is why it absconded. To prevent this you can move the swarm 3 miles or more away or else put a queen excluder under the floor for a week until the queen has started to lay again.

[beeanne]

Yep, went through brood box of swarmed colony and tore down 2 QC, leaving one. Red drawing pin on frame where QC was. Today is day 4 post-swarm, so haven't checked for emergency QC yet. Is the only explanation a cast, despite being only Day 4 and the shenanigance starting late-ish (8pm) in crappy weather?

My elderly hives are odd in that the entrance is on the brood box, not the floor, so using QX under brood box to contain queen won't work. I should've moved swarm further away.

[Adam]

If your housed swarm turned out to be queenless they would be looking to go back to their sisters and they have finished up underneath/around the hive?

Bees will hang about in a swarm in the wind/rain. They can be hardy little buggers!

A plastic queen excluder can be cut up and placed over the entrance and held in place with drawing pins if required. Thornes used to do a thin floppy plastic excluder which can be cut with scissors. Not sure if they still do them.

[gavin]

The separate little clusters puzzle me - surely a sign that there are several virgins on the loose? I'm very relucant to suggest this, as I *do* understand that you are perfect, but on the other hand I'm old and mature, and managed to make a mess of several artificial swarms this year, so poo happens.

[Jon]

The swarm on Sunday, was it definitely the prime as opposed to the first cast, ie were there eggs or small larvae present.

[beeanne]

Badly phrased, not a clump so much as a circle (sitting around gossiping rather than clumped around a queen?). The ones I nudged aside to break up the circle were all workers. I really am sure they were. Though am now seriously doubting my QC spotting...

Either way, at about 5pm all looked normal from the outside- a little bit of toing and froing, weather not great (but not raining at that stage), so not much activity. It was getting on for 8pm when I went out and saw this. If they'd left and the weather got grim then they'd not abandon mission and go back home, but would they leave on a fairly grotty evening?

This morning there are quite a few dead bees under the floor of the hive. I can't do too much poking about as have yet to buy baby-sized bee suit.

Gah! I despair, I was hacked off to loose a swarm in the first place, if have now lost a million casts despite checking for QC will be even less happy.

[beeanne]

The swarm on Sunday, was it definitely the prime as opposed to the first cast, ie were there eggs or small larvae present.

Cross posted with you Jon... yes, there were small larvae there but didn't see eggs - was looking for QC and didn't think to check for eggs. D'oh!

[Jon]

Depending upon the weather, the queen can still be in the colony a couple of days after the first cell is capped which means you could lose the prime swarm and then have the first cast coming off 4 or 5 days later.
In bad weather I often find sealed queen cells in a colony with the queen still present.
A 2 day old larvae is still pretty small and that is potentially 5 days from the queen was present.
They can still make queens from a 2 day old larvae although they are likely to be small.

It is pretty important to work out if the prime swarm was the recent one or if it went earlier as there could be several virgins running around inside.

If there are eggs in the swarm you housed on Sunday that would settle the matter as it must be the prime swarm.

[beeanne]

Weather up till Monday was glorious. When they swarmed Sunday, it was v hot and cloudless blue skies, and had been for the preceding few days. So I was assuming that they'd swarmed same day as QC was capped, and that that was the prime. The re-housed swarm left on Monday afternoon so no way of knowing if there are eggs or not.