This is a really simple question made necessary by my failing middle aged brain.
Does the swarm leave after the last queen cell is capped or after the first queen emerges?
They most often/likely leave before any new queens hatch. Thats the understanding I've always had.
If any cells are not capped, most likely they will not be so after the first queen comes out.
doak
Somewhere between when the queen cells are capped and before the first queen emerges. Of course then they may swarm again and again as the queens emerge.
If the emerging queen doesn't kill all the other unhatched queens you can have a problem with after swarms. After swarms are from the beehive that keeps on giving. After swarms can deplete a hive fairly rapidly. After swarms are most likely to happen if the queen cells were not developed at the same time. If you experience an after swarm I would go into the parent hive and remove all remaining queen cells (you might use some to start nucs) and kill the last queen to hatch then recombine the swarm and the hive.
Thanks
My Idea is to pull the queen some bees and the foragers right before the swarm issues, and split up the queen cells for nucs. The reason for waiting is I get a whole lot of foundation pulled from the fake swarm.
i've seen a picture of making an artificial swarm,:
open the hive, cage the queen and you put a board next to the hive, put the caged queen there and you brush all the bees onto that board-swarm bees hang around the queen, the non-swarmy bees crawl right back in.
Hey I like that Idea!
Sounds like it would work. I'm going to have to try it of brood box reversing falls through. Would it matter how you got them on the board?