They swarmed :(

Rachel · June 13, 2008, 06:47:30 PM

I'm so sad. I really thought I had been doing a good job....:sigh: my really great hive swarmed this morning. I guess I didn't get the boxes on soon enough. I can't believe it! I could see them high up in a tree for a while, and then they left. :-\ I wish I had some kind of lure....that was such an amazing queen. I'm soooo upset!!!!

Jerrymac · June 13, 2008, 06:55:59 PM

How are you certain the ones in the tree were yours?

Rachel · June 13, 2008, 07:03:39 PM

I'm pretty sure. There are 11 hives there (I have 2) and this morning one of the guys that works there called me and told me it was mine. I'm assuming they are right b/c this is my hive that was bearding sooo much recently and today it is not. Out of all 11 hives, this one seems the most active.
Here is my schedule of what I have done (If you really care)
April 12 Installed bees
MaY 4 added medium (didn't have deep)
June 1 medium is full...I start to panic and scramble to get more boxes ASAP
June 3 put deep between brood box and shallow and put on shallow super
June 13 swarm

The thing I don't get is that this is a new hive....I just assumed that they would be slow and fine....ack!!

annette · June 13, 2008, 07:17:10 PM

It happens to all of us eventually. But just adding supers does not stop them from swarming. I thought the same thing when I started beekeeping, but it is a bit more complicated than just adding supers. Try and read Michael Bush's website on preventing swarming and he explains it more.

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

Good Luck
Annette

thomast55 · June 13, 2008, 11:52:21 PM

Smells a little fishy to me . Sounds like you might be getting hoodwinked .

Dane Bramage · June 14, 2008, 12:28:53 AM

Quote from: thomast55 on June 13, 2008, 11:52:21 PM
Smells a little fishy to me . Sounds like you might be getting hoodwinked .

Fishy eh? Hoodwinked you say? Bamboozled? Flim-flammed?? It's that classic bee-swarm swindle! I used to be one of those bee-swarm swindlers, deceivingly telling others their bee's had swarmed.. but then I realized... uhh, where's the profit? ;)

Don't sweat it Rachel. Live & learn (& better luck next time). Perhaps the colony left behind, sharing some of the same genetics, will thrive.

CBEE · June 14, 2008, 08:47:34 AM

Mine had plenty of room and still swarmed. Just adding supers will not keep them from swarming. They left before I could get them hived so I just figure it was my contribution to keeping the ferral bee population alive and well :-D

Brian D. Bray · June 14, 2008, 09:40:38 PM

Quote from: CBEE on June 14, 2008, 08:47:34 AM
Mine had plenty of room and still swarmed. Just adding supers will not keep them from swarming. They left before I could get them hived so I just figure it was my contribution to keeping the ferral bee population alive and well :-D

So very true, keeping the brood chamber open is a must--bees busy building comb in the brood chamber seldom, if ever, swarm. Watch for backfilling of the brood chamber, this is often the 1st indicator the beekeeper well see. Provide proper ventilation, too hot, makes too crowded into a swarm. Provide sufficient space, slatted racks are good for providing an extra bedroom.
And remember if you find queen cells, capped or uncapped, it is too late to prevent a swarm, often it has already occurred, and the best you can do is a controlled split.

johnnybigfish · June 14, 2008, 11:46:06 PM

Hey rachel!
Last year i got my first packages...and within a short time I had 2 swarms in my yard and one just up the street. I caught all 3 of them!...At first I thought they were from my new hives, but when i would check on them(the original, new packages) they were no smaller than the earlier, more recent checks. I thought my 4 little acres were going to be a bee magnet!....(I was wrong....Not a single swarm that i've heard of within miles(20) of where i live so far this yeaR.
Maybe YOU have the "Bee Magnet Yard" this year!
good luck!

your friend,
john

CBEE · June 15, 2008, 09:30:14 AM

What Brian states is really what happened to me. Here I was thinking ( at the time ) that if I put a super on and did not use a QE then the queen would just come up and lay in the super if she needed room but how wrong I was. Instead what I got was a full super of honey :-D and a swarm that I did not catch :evil:. Just because you give them an unlimited brood nest does not mean they HAVE to use it.
If I would have put the super between the 2 deeps maybe it would have done the trick and if it had brood/ eggs in it I could have pulled it off and made a split.

UtahBees · June 16, 2008, 01:48:37 AM

Mine also swarmed today, but I was able to catch them right after. I got lucky.

I had put BeeBoost in my hives, and wasn't able to order and get a super on in time before they swarmed.

Click for more photos:

Regards -

Scott

Rachel · June 16, 2008, 09:37:12 AM

Wow! You were lucky they were close to the ground. Mine were about 50ft up. How'd you get them when they were all wrapped around the tree like that?

derrick1p1 · June 16, 2008, 11:59:44 AM

I have a hive that I thought was queenless because it was certainly full of laying workers. I did a shake out and shared brood from other hive. Had trouble getting it to requeen, but it finally did. The queen started laying, eggs everywhere....and 2 queen cells with larvae/royal jelly about 75% capped (saw this on Thursday). Checked Sunday and found the queen and the cells were gone. Maybe the new queen found them and destroyed them?

asciibaron · June 16, 2008, 02:26:12 PM

my hive swarmed this spring - the problem was simple - they could not draw out the comb fast enough. it was a new colony from a package and we had a very wet spring here in Maryland. the nectar was flowing, but so was the rain and it kept the girls in the hive for days at a time.

i added the second deep hive body when there were 7 frames used (7/10 rule). the bees went up leaving the remaining frames untouched. i was out of town 2 weekends in a row in May and during that time it appears they swarmed. the marked queen is no longer present and there was a week with no eggs. now there is a laying queen, and brood in various stages of development.

i still have several frames with just foundation and a few that they are starting to draw out comb on. i didn't put on any honey supers since the weather was bad and i didn't think there would be a great deal of honey beyond the amount needed by the bees. there is easily 60 pounds in the hive right now, and i might be able to steal the 1/2 frame of honey they are drawing out right now.

not a bad first year for me, and the swarming could not be avoided - there simply was no room for more brood. i ran through some calculations based on the queen laying 1500 eggs per day. what i predicted with the math came to be - they couldn't draw out the comb as fast as the honey was coming in and the queen was laying. i should not have a problem next year since they will have plenty of comb drawn out to work with.

the positive side of swarming is that your colony is thriving.

here is my timeline:

5 April - installed bees from package
19 April - comb being drawn out on several frames, queen laying in a good pattern
26 April - 7 frames filled with brood and honey in classic pattern - added 2nd deep with 10 frames
24 May - no eggs present - large amount of capped brood
31 May - no eggs present - still large amount of capped brood in lower brood chamber
7 June - eggs present - freshly capped brood in upper chamber, emerging brood in lower chamber - several frames of uncapped honey
15 June - many eggs present, brood in various stages of development - several full frames of capped honey
16 June - me trying to remember everything :-D

-Steve