Is it typical for a swarm to swarm within a month?

derekNGA · April 18, 2018, 09:53:55 PM

My strong hive #4 swarm on March 24th. I caught swarm making hive # 1 for me..(replacing a die out). Swarm had mated queen and already drawn comb to work with. They immediately began working hard. Within a few days they had several deep frames beautifully full of eggs. Today, April 18, 25 days later, they just swarm. That was this morning.
This evening same thing happened to another....
On March 31 my hive # 2 swarm. I caught and began hive #5 (another die out). They as well came with mated queen and immediately began working and filling old drawn frames. This evening they swarm, only 18 days later.
Both swarms were seen from beginning to end so I know positively which hives they came from.
Is it normal for such new established hives (by caught swarms) to swarm again themselves so soon?
Would the new swarms be taking the original mated queen or virgin queens? I checked both hives they left, both still have a good number of bees and about supers were about 70 percent full of capped honey and nectar. So out of room I do not think was a factor.
Just seems odd but I really have no idea, is this normal behavior?

BeeMaster2 · April 18, 2018, 10:31:53 PM

Derick,
Do they have any space to grow in. What is the makeup of your hives? How many/size brood boxes, Supers, are you using a queen excluder?
Jim

derekNGA · April 19, 2018, 06:10:24 AM

Hi Mr. Jim,
My make up is...solid bottom, 10 frame deep, and those two swarms were initially so big I added a med super on upon hiving them. Then after a week I added on another med super to both. No queen excluder. Brood boxs were nicely being filled last looked, next up the meds were full of capped, but the 2nd up meds on both one was empty and one had 3 frames drawn filling.

Acebird · April 19, 2018, 08:30:08 AM

A caught swarm from your own hive is more likely to leave because it is near the parent it came from. Normally the swarm would look for a new place to live between 2-5 miles away from the parent hive. If you caught the swarm and moved it to another apiary you might have better luck. Most likely after some time you could bring it back. And no I don't know how long that should be.
It is different with a split which is a man made swarm. With a split you either add a queen that isn't related to the parent or the split makes its own which takes a month. So maybe a month is a good starting time to keep a swarm away from the parent.

Michael Bush · April 19, 2018, 09:27:15 AM

>Is it typical for a swarm to swarm within a month?

If you feed them constantly, yes.

derekNGA · April 19, 2018, 09:47:50 AM

They were not being feed. We have a good flow going on now, so I assume that would be equal to me feeding constantly.
Thanks.

Michael Bush · April 19, 2018, 02:06:52 PM

>We have a good flow going on now, so I assume that would be equal to me feeding constantly.

Not exactly, but if they ran out of room they could swarm.

Beeboy01 · April 19, 2018, 05:25:04 PM

They could of moved on because of other causes like ants or robbing from the other hives. I had a nuc abscond once after only 6 weeks, they left brood and some house bees but the queen and workers disappeared over a weekend.

GSF · April 26, 2018, 01:41:46 PM

Derek, you said they both still had a lot of bees left, so I'd venture to say they did in fact swarm again. I'm in central Alabama. I had a swarm to draw out and fill with nectar, an 8f deep and an 8f medium. They did this in 10 days. When the flow hits the time line on everything is shortened, after the flow the time line seems to be longer than average.