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Swarms

For some reason the splits that I made days prior began to throw swarms. The first swarm was from split 002. This was a slow moving swarm and landed in the neighbors blossoming trees. This swarm was recovered and cloistered for 24 hours.

About 4 hours later another swarm was thrown from a split made 3 days prior. While going through the hives Split 005 threw a swarm while I was standing right next to it. The swarm rose into the air and then took off at a very fast pace. I could not keep up with the swarm while it flew down the block.

My assumption was that these splits would not have any desire to swarm. These splits were made with frames which had capped queen cells and a loose virgin queen. So maybe once the queen was mated, this triggered a swarm event. I expected that the viable queen or workers would eliminate the unhatched queens. This did not happen, this environment triggered swarms.

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Split Check

Seeing that the 8 frame colony threw a mating flight today, I also inspected Box 002. Box 002 was a split created from the same mother colony on the same day. Box 002 had a loose queen with several unhatched queen cells. The queen was piping. I covered 2 of the unhatched queen cells with wire mesh and I will check on them tomorrow.

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Further Splits

The observed mating flight from the splits performed last month on April 16, prompted an immediate inspection of the splits. The hope is that there are unhatched and intact queen cells still in the splits. Upon inspection of the two splits, there were approximately 6 unhatched queen cells and several loose virgin queens. With these resources, I made 3 additional splits from the colony that just threw the mating flight.

Colony that threw the mating flight was inspected fully. Both the top and bottom boxes had brood and eggs back in the April split. The assumption was that the bottom box threw the mating flight and the top still had unhatched cells. This was correct, the bottom box had a loose queen which was piping. The top also had a loose queen which was piping and 4 unhatched queen cells. The two boxes were separated by a queen excluder. Virgin queens can cross a queen excluder but my hope was that they had not.

The top short frames were used to create three new splits. 2 splits had unhatched queen cells. The third split had the loose queen from the top box. I left the bottom box largely untouched. The picture is the bottom box after all the splits. Still plenty of bees.

The 3 splits are of rather small size. However, I think given this queen prolific winter, these colonies should bounce back. If not, we will use them for splits at the Corona street property. The yellow mating NUC has the loose queen and an unattached cell. The Blue box has several unhatched cells. Box 005 has several unhatched queen cells.

NOTE: These splits were made with short frames from the donor colony honey super. These shorts must be replaced as soon as possible.