my hive swarmed today. just before i hived them half of them went back to the original hive. i hived the remainder. after a few minutes the remainder all went back to the original hive. when i went into the original hive i found a couple opened swarm cells one still sealed cell and my old queen on the same comb as the one sealed cell. she looked wrecked. this is her first year and she looked half dead. she had no interest in the one sealed cell and i heard no piping and didn't see any virgin queens (not that i expected too, they're quick). i looked in again a couple hours later and she was still on the same comb and the one cell was still fine. all i know for sure is bees are weird. anyone have some input?
That is odd! I haven't seen that one yet. My guess would be the original queen did not fly out into the swarm of bees as they took off for some reason. If she's half dead, maybe she can't fly? Without a queen, I suppose there's a good change the swarm of bees will return to the original hive.
What is your plan now? Are you going to leave your half dead queen in there and let them try again?
Place the old beaten up gal in a nuc with a frame of brood & feed, a mini split if you will. The virgins in the parent hive will figure it out. BTW, your queen is not interested in destroying virgin queens. That is performed by hatched virgins.
...JP
I am fairly new, just wondering if the swarms you saw were the virgin queens on their mating flight, and then returned to the hive. Would keep an eye on them for the next few days.
Joe
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Who knows what happened but order is so that first swarm rushes out and the queen follow the swarm
For some reason queen did not came out and swarm was obliged to return. Clipped queen swarm acts this way. When it gets a new queen, then it goes.
thanks for the input everyone. it definitely was not a mating flight, so i think I'll make up a mini nuc and go from there.
it makes sense that the bees tried to swarm but went back because the queen couldn't fly, one of her wings did look bad.