9:30AM / 64 degrees / Sunny
This morning I looked out and noticed the nuc starting to swarm. This was the queen along with the nurse bees and worker bees I took from Christin's hive last week as I caught them trying to swarm.
It is really strange they are trying to swarm again as I stepped in and took them from the original hive and moved them 30 miles away. This should have sufficed as the swarm they tried to do a week earlier. The swarm left and then returned to the nuc. I once again found the queen on the table the nuc was sitting on. This time I moved all bees into a normal sized 10 frame hive. There should be plenty of room for these bees now.
Within an hour, they were swarming again (3rd time in a week they tried to swarm). The swarm once again returned to the hive. I found and captured the queen on the ground in front of the hive.
Something must be wrong with the queen for her to try to swarm 3 times and each time she was unable to fly,
There is one way to remedy an urge to swarm after all other ways failed; remove the queen from the hive and kill her. Without a queen, the colony will create a new queen.
After I killed the queen, I performed a field dissection of her and noticed the spermatheca was milky white in color. This indicates a failing or old queen. The decision to remove her was correct.
At this time the 3rd hive is queenless. I am hoping a new queen will develop within days.
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