Full hive, will they swarm?

[rookie2531]

   I went in today to put a queen excluder in between a deep and a medium. The reason for the excluder is to make sure I don't grab the queen in a few days when I swap some frames for a weaker hive. Well when I went to pick the medium up, oh my, heavvvy! I have read that a lot of beeks have switched to 8 frame mediums for reasons of weight and thought really, those amounts of numbers for weight are probably best case scenarios. Well this is my first full medium of mostly stores, but there is brood in there as well, and well now I'm thinking 8 frame too.

   Anyway, the hive is full and it wasn't 1 week ago. I dont know for sure if the queen is in the deep, but I smoked the bees down in the medium and that always seemed to get her down in the deep before. After I see no eggs/larva in the mediums, my plans were to swap some of them with undrawn frames from the weak hive. If the hive remains full, will they swarm this time of year, and if yes, about how long do you think it has to be full before they make q-cells? oh yeah,  I have been feeding all year and now they finally have a medium full, I did not fill there jars today. But am still feeding the others.

[BeeMaster2]

Rookie,
Normally I would say no they will not swarm at this time of the year but you have been feeding them and the bees think there is a good flow on. That changes the answer. If you have full hives I would stop feeding or at least reduce the their feeding by only giving them a few holes.
If they swarm, they will seriously weeken the hive for winter.
Jim

[rookie2531]

Rookie,
Normally I would say no they will not swarm at this time of the year but you have been feeding them and the bees think there is a good flow on. That changes the answer. If you have full hives I would stop feeding or at least reduce the their feeding by only giving them a few holes.
If they swarm, they will seriously weeken the hive for winter.
Jim

Jim, I did not feed them yesterday. I am hoping they won't swarm on me, because I plan on using some of those bees to strengthen my weak hive. How long after making queen cells do colonies swarm? (7-12 days?) I want to know so I go back in before that and possibly manage them, not to swarm. Open the brood, checkerboard and add another box. I'm not even sure they have queen cells though as I didn't look at any frames so it would be a guessing game.

[BeeMaster2]

Rookie,
Normally I would say no they will not swarm at this time of the year but you have been feeding them and the bees think there is a good flow on. That changes the answer. If you have full hives I would stop feeding or at least reduce the their feeding by only giving them a few holes.
If they swarm, they will seriously weeken the hive for winter.
Jim

Jim, I did not feed them yesterday. I am hoping they won't swarm on me, because I plan on using some of those bees to strengthen my weak hive. How long after making queen cells do colonies swarm? (7-12 days?) I want to know so I go back in before that and possibly manage them, not to swarm. Open the brood, checkerboard and add another box. I'm not even sure they have queen cells though as I didn't look at any frames so it would be a guessing game.

Rookie,
Normally when bees cap the queen cells, the hive will swarm. Remember, queen cups are beeing made all the time, a queen cup becomes a queen cell when it has larva in it. Checker boarding is an excellent way of keeping them from swarming. The bees need need a place to build wax and the queen needs a place to lay eggs.
Look under the brood boxes for swarm cells.
Jim

[NotactJack]

I would like to point out that checker boarding is a method of swarm prevention usually practiced in the spring. It is done by alternation frames of empty comb and filled in the supers. The brood nest is not affected. You want to prevent the colony from becoming honey bound. You could try opening the brood nest by placing an empty frame in the middle.

[rookie2531]

I would like to point out that checker boarding is a method of swarm prevention usually practiced in the spring. It is done by alternation frames of empty comb and filled in the supers. The brood nest is not affected. You want to prevent the colony from becoming honey bound. You could try opening the brood nest by placing an empty frame in the middle.

Thanks for the info Jack, but both my deep and medium are both brood as the queen has been able to go wherever, because I was not interested in stealing honey this year, just building more hives and making them strong enough to last winter.