A Swarm Question

[Ben Framed]

Once bees make swarm cells, when does the queen leave with her share of the hive? When cups are made with lava. or when queen cells are capped, or a day or so before queen cells hatch, or other?

[iddee]

After queen cells are capped, then according to the weather. It may be after emerging if the weather is that bad.

[Michael Bush]

>Once bees make swarm cells, when does the queen leave with her share of the hive?

Like iddee says, once the first one is capped and they think the weather is good enough.

[Ben Framed]

Thanks men.
Phillip

[Ben Framed]

I would like to ask a follow up question. I missed the boat a week or so ago by destroying uncapped swarm cells in a hive which is a strong hive. I wish I had ask for advice before doing this as you all explained the benefits of splitting using those 12 cells. Here is the question, and I have never heard this question before; can uncapped queen cells be cut out and used in splits, or must they be capped first.
Thanks,
Phillip

[iddee]

The more bees in a hive, the better quality queens it will raise. That means open cells will get fed better in the mother hive than in a split. If the split does feed and raise a queen from an open cell, she will be inferior to one raised in the mother hive. Once capped, heat and humidity are all that is required, so splits are fine for that. Waiting a few days for them to cap will produce better queens.

As for swarm prevention, it is better to remove the queen into the split.

[Ben Framed]

Thanks iddee, good information and explanation.
Phillip

[blackforest beekeeper]

If you use enough frames of brood and bees, open cells are fine. watch out that the cell is somewhere, where the bees can keep it warm and care for it. so cells at the bottom will be loosers.
I use 3 frames of brood and a follower board if possible on the open side. or a frame or a side of frame of honey on the outer side. queen cell somewhere in the middle.
if using a "too small" box, they might give off after-swarms. so it may in some cases be reasonable to just leave one good swarm cell at a good position in the split.
if you don?t move the split to another location, foragers will leave the nuc. think of that about the amount of bees taken to the split.

another possibility would be to move the queen with a frame of open brood and bees to another box or another location while waiting for the cells to ripen. at least till capped. for the cells best is to use them in splits just before emerging. this will loose you honey and bee production, of course.

yet another method, which comes very close to the natural swarming act: take about a quart of bees with the old queen out just prior to capping. treat it like an artificial swarm (cellar for a couple days or use one frame of open brood to keep the bees in the new box and move it somewhere else). then let the cells ripen. divide up the rest of the hive into nucs just prior to emerging and move all (but the box at that location with a cell and the foragers) to another stand.
last point altered: let them emerge. dig into the hive, collect virgin queens. give each one some bees (depending on size of your mating nucs), a box and move them. treat according to artificial swarms.
in this way you might still get a bit of honey out of the originial hive, but not much.
of course, you may divide up the frames with the emerged queens, too.
but the first option gives the most "natural artificial after-swarms". 
those units really go for it and build natural comb like crazy. lot of work, kind of.

[Ben Framed]

Blackforest, Thank you for the detailed post!
Phillip