I went to the bee yard today to mow. Luckily, I took everything I needed for any bee activity. Upon arrival, the bees in Christin's hive looked normal. 45 minutes later, they were in a full swarm. It looked like a cyclonic cloud of bees exiting the hive and spiraling into the sky. In a swarm about 60% of the bees leave the hive in search of a new home. The swarm landed on a nearby cedar tree and within 15 minutes all were returning back to the hive. This is very strange and indicates the queen never left with the swarm.
Since they wanted to swarm, I decided to split the hive by putting the queen, frames of eggs, open and capped larvae and food in a 5 frame nuc box and take back to my house in Charlotte. By splitting the hive and moving the nuc to a location greater than 3 miles away, this simulates the swarm they were trying to do (a controlled swarm). This alleviates hive congestion, and a new queen will hatch in the old hive and take over. The new queen will set out to mate and start laying eggs within 2 weeks.
Things I noticed:
· The hive was not overpopulated, therefore not sure why they wanted to swarm as there was plenty of space in the hive to lay eggs.
· The pattern of eggs / brood was spotty and only a few eggs were seen. This means the queen may be failing.
· Many supercedure queen cells were found indicating the bees wanted the old queen to leave.
· I found the queen on the ground about 5 feet in front of the hive. She is unable to fly for some reason.
I returned to Charlotte with the nuc and plan on raising this into our 3rd hive.
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