hive swarmed, caught swarm, pics attached and help with questions please!

[luke0927]

Hello will be my first post here (sorry for long one) and looking to get advice from more knowledgeable folks than me!  Little background I'm here in North GA, this is my 2nd year beekeeping started 2 hives from packages last spring.  One hive went into winter with 1 Deep and 2 mediums full of honey, other hive was 1 deep and 1 medium full of honey.

On hive inspections a few weeks ago I noticed bees had consumed most of the hone and the queen was now laying and I had broad/pollen in all hive bodies. but on the smaller hive they were still focusing more on the medium and not moving back down to all the frames of the deep.

I went in the hives the other day and noticed the smaller hive had egg number down and I saw a queen cell in the middle of a frame, so I figured a supercedure cell.

So yesterday look out window and 1 hive has swarmed to a nearby tree.  luckily I was able to catch the swarm and put in a hive, but I was still a little confused to which hive it came from (I pulled deep frames from both hives, to put in swarm box and still saw a lot of bees in each).  

So after doing some reading about swarming I read that the queen will cut down on laying before so i'm leaning toward the smaller hive.  I went back in both hives yesterday to try and see a queen but could not find either (will look again today)  I ended up taking some pictures off some frames that could be swarm cells, to me a lot of them did not look like swarm queen cells like I would have expected, I was expecting nice peanut shaped along the bottom of the frame, this looked like bur comb to me, they had made the comb between the bottom of the top super frames and the top of the frames from the supper below.  When pulling the hive body it actually tore a decent amount of the comb.

So I need to determine for sure which hive swarmed and if it was the small one, I need to try and keep my larger one from swarming (need help with that)

So here are the pics and a video off the phone so sorry for shakyness

Swarm





MOV02415.MPG

Large hive inspection












Smaller hive inspection

[Robo]

Interesting how they swarmed on the bark of the tree and not a branch.


Do you notice any reduction in bee population in the hives?  That swarm looks like a pretty good size.

Not to add to your frustrations in figuring this out,  but the swarm may not have come from one of your hives.   I have had a swarm land on empty equipment between two hives, and the swarm did not come from one of my hives (yet another advantage of marking queens).

[luke0927]

When I opened the hives to pull the the frames, I didn't notice any less bee's so I had wondered if it was another swarm. I was thinking that or I just miscalculated how many bee really fit in the hive...In the video you see that larger hive split and that deep is overflowing with bees.

on the one blury pic you see that good queen cell in the smaller hive, I went ahead and swapped the hive bodies and put the deep up 1 to try and have move move back into it.  If I can find the queen in my larger hive (saw eggs yesterday) should I cut all those cells off?

[beyondthesidewalks]

In conversations with other beekeepers, I've noted that it's not unusual for feral bees to swarm to your bee yard.  Strikes me as odd because you'd think they would want less competition for resources.  Anyway, I've had successful swarm traps in or near my bee yard and am fairly certain those swarms did not eminate from my hives.  I think it's a good idea to keep a swarm trap or two around your bee yard, not to trap your bees, but the bees from other sources that will swarm to your yard.

Sounds like your hives may have a mind to swarm.  You might want to swarm for them by splitting to keep from losing your bees.  If you search for splitting on Beemaster, you will find a bunch of good info on that topic.

[luke0927]

Today weather is good again, going to look for a queen in the boxes hopefully, in another day or two if I find eggs then that would mean that is the hive that didn't swarm correct?  The virgin would need a how long to mate and start laying?