One of my hives swarmed. I got the swarm and it seems happy in its new box, but I'm wondering when I need to go into the original hive and make sure they're doing OK with the new queen.
And then when should I go into the new swarm hive and make sure the old queen is happy and laying OK, etc. ?
The hive that swarmed should have capped queen cell(s). They will hatch in a week.(If there are enough bees they could swarm again.) Give the queen another week to mate and another week to get to laying. So basically in three weeks you should have a laying queen. If you want to make more splits, then check on them before the queen cells hatch next week. Then you can decide if you have enough bees to put in a nuc or two.
As far as the swarm, if after a couple of days they start bringing in pollen then they are happy and starting to raise brood. I'd leave them be for at least a couple of weeks.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmath.htm
"If a hive just swarmed today, how long before the new queen is laying? Assuming this was the primary swarm, it usually leaves the day the first queen cell gets capped. So that means a new queen will emerge in 8 days. That queen may leave with another swarm or the workers may allow her to kill all the others and stay. Assuming she kills all the others (which are staggered in age, so they will emerge at different times if they do afterswarm) then she should be laying most likely two weeks later. So that's about three weeks give or take a week. (two to four weeks)."
Robin,
If I remember correctly, you use screen bottom boards with oil traps. Keep checking the oil trays for heavy droppings and for SHB. When a hives swarms down here the SHB's swarm it and start laying their eggs every where. My observation hive swarmed while I was on vacation and too many bees left and moved into one of my traps. The SHB's moved in and slimed it and I had SHB larvae pouring out of it when I came home. It really only had newly hatched larvae protecting the hive and they could not handle it. I ended up putting the bees on other hives and froze the 8 frames to kill all of the SHB/larvae/eggs.
Jim
Thank you, everyone!
cao - I checked the original hive this morning. 3 1/2 boxes overflowing with bees. Backfilled brood nest in 3 mediums. The super [4th box] had 5 foundationless drawn with 5 foundationless frames completely untouched. My gut said they were ripe for throwing another swarm [not that I have enough experience to have great instincts, but I erred to the side of caution.]
I decided to do a split. For the original hive, I found the first capped queen cell and left it in its box and put it with the bottom box which had more brood and wasn't backfilled with nectar like all the other boxes. For the new split, I put a middle box full of brood all stages and 2 queen cells under construction with the 1/2 filled super in a new spot. I hope I did right.
Michael - thanks for the quote from your bee math page. I was all over your site this weekend studying swarms, but never thought to look on the bee math page. I love that page - don't know why it didn't occur to me to look there. Thank you!
Jim - Good to know about the SHB. My hives are in full sun and I have only ever seen 6 in 5 years and 5 of those were this year in an unused box of comb I left in a closed stack over the winter. When I went in to doublecheck it, there those buggers were. I froze all the frames from that box. Haven't seen any since [knock wood].