Swarm preparation?

reedyfork · Post by **reedyfork** » Tue Mar 11, 2025 7:03 pm

Anyone seeing signs yet of colonies preparing to swarm? Of course, this is the first year I had huge plans to split using swarm cells (since I'm always battling swarming every other spring), and here we are on March 11 and absolutely ZERO of my colonies look like they are necessarily close! They are certainly huge, full of brood, with drones, and could definitely be split NOW, but I really don't want to go the "emergency queen" route.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's going to take advantage this week, so I'd love to know what others are seeing.

TooBusy · Post by **TooBusy** » Wed Mar 12, 2025 4:26 pm

I did top to bottom inspections in my 2 hives yesterday. Tons of brood, eggs, and larvae at all stages, thankfully no queen cells.
Some drones in the hive and hundreds of capped drone cells. We're getting close...

Post by **Wally** » Thu Mar 13, 2025 4:48 am

Beez Needz found queen cells yesterday and made a split. March 12. 2025. Get ready. They are coming.

Post by **Jacobs** » Thu Mar 13, 2025 1:06 pm

One of my bait hives at the house is being examined. It may not be chosen, but there is definite interest in it.

Post by **Jacobs** » Mon Mar 17, 2025 6:14 am

I went through 3 of the stronger looking hives at my house yesterday afternoon. The one that over wintered in 2-10 frame mediums was in swarm mode with multiple queen cells. None of the cells were capped and several were damaged when I separated supers to have a look at bottom bars of frames. I did leave some queen cells undamaged. My queen is marked, so it was easy to locate her and move her into a nuc along with 2 brood frames, 2 frames of food and a frame of open drawn comb. I hope, but don't fully expect that this will stop the original hive from swarming. It might.

Post by **Jacobs** » Tue Mar 18, 2025 5:41 pm

I found 1 more of the house hives in swarm mode today. I was able to move the marked queen into a nuc and will wait to see what happens.

reedyfork · Post by **reedyfork** » Wed Mar 19, 2025 6:54 am

Same here! I found my three strong home hives all in swarm mode yesterday. No capped cells yet, but a few that are very close. Luckily, I caught them just in time, found all three marked queens, and made multiple splits.

One of these had already drawn an entire deep this past month, was sitting in three deeps, and they had brood in all three boxes. All new empty cells were filled with nectar. I'm getting honey supers on everyone today!

Post by **royl** » Wed Mar 19, 2025 2:44 pm

I have a feeling it will be very soon for GBO. My friend south of GBO has many capped queen cells in his hive and plans to use the Demaree method to resolve it.

Post by **Jacobs** » Fri Mar 21, 2025 3:20 pm

I have 2 bait hives being scouted at the house this afternoon. The one I posted about on March 13th is getting more interest than it did then. The other bait hive is in the tulip poplar I had cut to a 10 foot post last year (viewtopic.php?t=2668). I have a bait hive sitting on a tree stand with the entrance about 7 feet up.

Pharmacyman · Post by **Pharmacyman** » Sun Mar 23, 2025 7:34 am

I am hoping for some swarm calls this year. I have been doing this long enough to know I need more than two backyard hives. Last year I caught two swarms from being on our swarm call list. My main goal this year is to increase to four to six hives.

Post by **Jacobs** » Sun Mar 23, 2025 7:41 am

Swarms are a good way of increasing hives. They are natural comb building machines, or, if placed on open drawn comb, can make a honey crop. Another way of increasing hive count is by attempting to keep your current hives from swarming. I found about 4 of my hives in swarm mode so far. I got in early enough that swarm cells had not been capped and my marked queens had not left. I moved the queens into nucs with a couple of frames of capped brood, and the rest food frames and open, drawn comb. I shook more bees into the nucs to make the initial population stronger. I'm hoping the original hives will complete raising queens but not follow through with swarming.

hazmatinferno · Post by **hazmatinferno** » Sun Mar 23, 2025 3:05 pm

On March 19th I found three capped queen cells in one of my colonies. I am in Colfax. It was a colony that I was wanting to continue the genetics of, so I made a split using the cells. The next day, I thought, "You know, I probably should have checked all of those frames closer to ensure I didn't miss any queen cells." Yesterday (March 22), I checked much more carefully and found that there was another capped queen cell and a queen cell that was almost capped. Glad I double checked! Hopefully, I didn't split them down too hard, but I made another split with those two cells. I guess that would equate to one "heavy" split and two "skinny" splits.

I also have two swarm boxes in the woods behind our house. For the past two days I have seen scouting of both boxes.

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