Timing and swarming question

[chux]

There is an older beek in my area with one hive, which he has had for about four years. The brood comb is very dark. On April 10, he had a swarm come out of his hive. The hive had one deep and one shallow, with a queen excluder between the two. A friend got the swarm, which the older beek didn't want. 2 days later, April 12, I inspected the hive for the older beek. I saw two virgin queens on the same frame. I removed one, hoping to reduce the chance of secondary swarms. There were also at least 6 swarm cells. I assumed the virgin queen would have time to kill those unhatched queens, and I left them. I removed the queen excluder and told him to give them more room. He had no more equipment, so I left a medium box with frames which needed to be cleaned and started over. I told him to clean the frames up, then put the medium on top of the shallow, to give more room. About a week later, he did get the medium onto the hive.

I went back to check to make sure he had a laying queen yesterday. So it had been 18 days since I saw the virgin and cells. They have not touched the top medium. The shallow is nearly empty of nectar. The deep is backfilled with nectar. I saw plenty of bees. Tons of drones. Two capped queen cells. One frame had uncapped and growing larvae on one side of it. I saw no queen. Of course there are plenty of places she could hide.

I told the beek that it could be possible that the new queen is just getting started laying. I told him I would give her a few more days, and check again early next week to see if he had a laying queen.

Here are some things to note. There is a massive bee tree in the same yard. I put a swarm trap in the yard, hoping to collect a swarm from the tree. About 3 days ago, the beek told me that a swarm moved into my box. Wonder where they came from??? Is it possible that the hive in his box got honeybound and decided to swarm? Oh, the 2 queen cells in the hive now are on the other side of the box from the one frame with larvae in it. Could they be cells from the old queen that didn't hatch and didn't get torn down?

I told the beek that if we go back in and don't see a queen or eggs next week, We will do a combine from my swarm trap and put those bees in his hive, whether they came from there or not. I'm just wondering what in the world happened, if indeed that swarm came from his hive in that time frame. Any ideas would be appreciated.   

[AliciaH]

Chux, the fun thing about swarming is that it's like a box of chocolates, you're just not sure what you're going to get.

In a perfect world from a beekeeping standpoint, the first virgin that hatches can kill her competition and you won't have to worry about after-swarms.  But the polar opposite is that they can keep swarming.  Conceivably, as many times as there were queen cells.  And, where bee math is concerned, you start your count down for eggs from when the last known queen hatched (and hopefully stayed). 

How is the population of the original hive looking?

Does your swarm trap hive have larvae, yet?  If possible, I'd feed a larvae frame to the old hive to buy them some time and stave off the laying workers.

[chux]

Plenty of bees in the old hive. I will be lowing the swarm trap out of the tree early next week. If they are indeed queenless in the old hive, I am hoping that the existence of uncapped/freshly capped brood will prevent a laying worker for a few more days.

I spoke with a commercial beek a little while ago, and described the situation and timeline. He thinks it is unlikely that the queen swarmed from the old hive at this point. Also, given the location of the queen cells I saw, they are probably from the original swarm cell batch, and just didn't make it. The bees can sometimes take a while to tear them down.

I know what you mean about multiple swarms. I have seen 3 small swarms come out of one tree in the last week. They must have all been laid and hatched around the same time.