Just checked a new hive that came from a nuc about two months ago. It's in a 10 frame deep with another deep on top divided with a queen excluder. The brood box is full of brood and has a lot of young queen cells in it, I pulled two frames of brood with some queen cells into another hive that wasn't queen right but there still are a lot of other queen cells in the new hive. Any ideas as to what to do? I don't want a swarm.
Make a nuc. Steal the queen with 2-3 frames of brood/stores and couple empty frames and make a 5 frame nuc. Watch the hive to make sure it requeens with the open queen cells. It'll knock down the swarming impulses and you've got 2 nucs.
If I find a hive that is about to swarm I remove the queen with a couple frames of brood and bees. Then come back in about a week and cut out all but two swarm cells. Cutting out all but two cells usually stops them from throwing off after swarms. I save the queen cells that I cut out and put in Matting Nucs. A big swarming hive makes some very nice queens.
There is enough brood in the new hive to make a strong nuc and I have a 5 frame nuc box sitting in the shed so I'll go that route. Hate to break up a good hive but when a lot of queen cells appear the hive is getting ready to swarm. Do you think that having a queen excluder on top of a single brood box kicked the hive into swarm mode. I usually won't use a queen excluder and have brood in at least two boxes, this is the first time I'm running only one brood box with an excluder.