Two Many Swarms

[MrILoveTheAnts]

Am I doing something wrong?

This is my first year having 3 really good hives. One swarmed last week, but then... They decided to swarm again. This double swarming activity happened last year too, and everyone told me they don't swarm twice without swarming a third time.

Also what exactly is happening here?

During the second swarm of this hive, it triggered another hive to swarm making a very loud buzzing sound you could hear three houses down. Looking at the ground you could even make out the shadows of bees flying. Also I witnessed several of them fighting one another in mid air combat. The swarms drifted to the front of the house and both landed together where I assume the queens are ducking it out or both were killed by the other's workers. I assume the queen from the second hive to swarm took over since her workers know dam well who she is while the one form the second swarm have only just met her maybe a few days ago.

Also they're pretty high up there in a tree near power lines. It is possible to get a ladder to them safely but not a box or anything of the sort. The limb is a little thick as well. Shaking might work. Does anyone have any suggestions for getting them down.

[lovelyembalmer]

 :(Hate to see you going through what we have done this year.  We have had four swarms out of our two boxes we started with this spring.  My husband said he was going to stop them one way or another. He went in about every other day and took out every queen cell he could find. One box we could not get down into the brood box because the "racks" were sticks nailed to the top of the box.  We torn the box open, transfered as many bees to a new box as we could, placed brood wax w/ queen cells on it in the new box hoping the bees would raise a new queen because we could not find the queen. also the brood cell were filled with honey and pollen, not eggs and brood. to help promote the build up, we also took a rack of brood and eggs from one of the newly caught swarms that was doing great and had 8 of 10 racks full and also had queen cells getting ready to swarm again :-x the little brats!! and place it in with the disturbed hive. Now we have a laying queen, He found her Saturday.  The swarm box had already filled the racks and were trying to swarm again.  Sunday he split the hive and made two. Now the little brats :evil:will have to do more work instead of swarm>

[MrILoveTheAnts]

Alright slash that. It seems the queen form the hive that swarmed twice has won. I know this because they just took off again and she landed with both swarms at their hive!

[KONASDAD]

lots of swarms this year because the fruit tree blooms were numerous, and now black locust is in full bloom everywhere.

[Brian D. Bray]

Multiple swarms (aka After swarms) usually occur when the creation of queen cells happens over a period of time, especially if the original queen continues to lay almost up to the day of departure.  An immerging queen will kill of capped queen cells by stinging them but will ignore uncapped queen cells.  So a swarm occurs about a week to 10 days later and if the workers start queen cells from the eggs of the new queen you can have another swarm amd so on, and so on, and so forth.

[MrILoveTheAnts]

That's interesting.

As a bit of an update. They swarmed to the same out of reach tree branch, and then hours ago decided once again to return to the same hive.

Are they waiting for good weather or could this eventually correct itself with queens fighting to the death. 

[lovelyembalmer]

If they cann't coach the queen to come out, then they will return to the hive to try again another day.

[Michael Bush]

Sounds like your bees are succeeding really well.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesulbn.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesexperiment.htm

[MrILoveTheAnts]

This is becoming a daily routine. Once more my mom woke me up to let me know the same hive was swarming. I didn't bother waking up, had work anyhow. A few minutes later she told me they landed on the same branch for the third or fourth time this week. And they've been there ever since. A rain storm has prevented them from returning.

I'm going to open the hive tomorrow, if weather allows, and figure out what's going on.

Also I'm aware my play on words title no longer applies.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees%202008/SwarminTrees.jpg

[Brian D. Bray]

This is becoming a daily routine. Once more my mom woke me up to let me know the same hive was swarming. I didn't bother waking up, had work anyhow. A few minutes later she told me they landed on the same branch for the third or fourth time this week. And they've been there ever since. A rain storm has prevented them from returning.

I'm going to open the hive tomorrow, if weather allows, and figure out what's going on.

Also I'm aware my play on words title no longer applies.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees%202008/SwarminTrees.jpg

I'm betting on a clipped queen.

[MrILoveTheAnts]

The swarm actually flew away maybe a week ago. Here are some more pics of it that were still on my camera.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees%202008/Swarm2008trees.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Bees%202008/Swarm2008tree.jpg