2 of my 12 hives are on a hill side, not far from the apiary of another beek that I have yet to meet (10 lovely looking hives) so I know there is enough forage for the bees. One of my 2 hives is doing really well (added a second super today) the other seems to be going backwards. This hive swarmed on 1st April ( saw the swarm and attempted to catch them but they just flew off the next day). The last time I checked this hive I found a lot of queen cells. 2 of the cells had already hatched, 3 of them I removed (documented in an earlyer post), there was plenty of worker brood as well as drone brood - mostly capped, don't remember seeing any eggs but I was to distracted by the queen cells to see anything else.
Today I had a quick peek (weather was too bad to do a real inspection) and saw that they had totally abandoned the super taking most of the nectar with them. There is a fair number of bees in the brood box but they are not even defending the entrance (this was a fairly defensive colony before) I poked my hive tool in the entrance to entice them out a bit but only 1 drone came out to have a look see. There were bees flying in and out both hives when we arrived so I know that they are going out to forage.
Now my question is could this colony be dwindling because it just keeps on swarming or because I disrupted them by removing the queen cells and they are now queenless?
It could be that it cast off a secondary swarm with a Virgin queen and because you removed the remaining cells they have no queen. I did the same thing my 1st year and had to buy a queen. Usually the 1st hatched queen destroys the remaining cells unless they want to swarm again and don't let her. Put a frame of eggs in and see if they make more cells. If they don't, you may a young queen the hasn't started laying or is on her mating flight.
I'm thinking could be a few things. they could of swarmed again, or they could be getting robbed blind, and you will have to do a detailed inspection to know for sure if there is a queen or not (Or look at the other queen cells and see if they have assassination holes in them from the queen, other tells like eggs/etc.) The best course of action depends on what is actually happening I think.... above is good advice if they have no queen currently, doing nothing but feeding them and nursing them back, you have the year to do it, treat it like its a new starter hive, etc. The good thing is, you have other hives to get eggs from. you can build a builder hive and integrate there also.
Did I understand you captured the swarm and them put it right back in the same hive again, and then they left again the next day? not saying that "Can't" work...but they left in the first place for a reason, I'm thinking, taking more stores with them the second time too.
I 'caught' the swarm on 1st April but left the capture hive at the site of the swarm over night and the whole of the next day as I was working and could not get back there until fairly late in the day, so the swarm had flown away again before I got there to close up and move them away.
2 of the 3 queen cells I removed hatched the same day just hours apart and the 3rd one has not hatched. I marked the 2 new queens and placed them into 2 of my other hives that were queenless or possibly queenless but that is another story - with 12 hives I'm getting to see allsorts of different and interesting things.
Of the 12 I have 7 that are really booming - 3 of them alreday have 2 supers on - and the others have 'issues' that need attention.
As this is my 1st year with bees I'm on a very steep learning curve here! :lol: