New guy (1 week old),
I bought the contents of 1 deep brood box and had the seller put them in my new hive body on Mon. Tuesday I brought them home and placed them on my
stand. I left them alone until today. This was my first time inside a hive and doing a inspection. The bees seemed content since I brought them home. When I opened them today I smoked them a little and they were very calm. I saw what I think are queen cells on the bottom of a couple of frames and some in the middle of a couple of frames. I assume that they are either getting ready to swarm or supercede the old queen. The seller remarked that the queen he gave me was a young queen.
I have a new empty nuc that I just filled with new undrawn foundation. I just placed it
about 10 feet from the hive that I believe is about to swarm. Will that do any good ? Please give some insight in what I should do to prevent a swarm.
Thanks
Mike
PS the queen cells all appear to still be capped.
how full is the hive you bought?
I have never looked into a hive before to compare. The seller told me that he gave me 5 frames of bees. The other 5 frames are a mixture of drawn and undrawn. There were bees working on all frames. I tried to look for eggs, but I am too new and rushed myself. There appeared to be a lot of capped cells in the middle that I assume are brood.
I am debating wether to leave them alone or transplant 2 frames with queen cells to the nuc with undrawn frames.
Look at them closely. They may be old cells. Is the bottom open? Yes, the queeen is already out. Closed, a queen is inside. They may also be drone cells. Google or seardh on here for pics of drone and queen cells to compare.
you'll get answers from those more experienced than i, but the first two things i think i'd do are to make sure you have a queen in there, and feed.
you may have lost your queen in the transfer, or she was injured.
some feel that feeding will help prevent swarming...in any event, feeding a new hive helps them get going. it takes them some time to find stuff and when they are small, they don't have so many workers to bring in lots of stuff.
Like Kathyp said, make sure you have a queen. Feed them and give them room to branch out and they may not swarm, plus, the hive may have made these queen cells because the hive the guy took the 5 frames from was about to supercede the queen or they were congested and just needed some room. Like Konasdad mentioned, the queen cells you have could be old. Monitor the hive carefully. Queen cells don't always mean that they will swarm.