u/InevitableSlip746

SWMO

So we know if we leave too many queen cells, the colony will throw off cast swarms until the population is too small to continue. I experienced this with my huge, strong colony last week that I had already split. I only left 3 cells so I thought I was safe and left them alone for a few weeks to raise a queen. Apparently they made more cells after I got in there. I’ve had 4 virgin swarms within a two day period this last week so I went through the hive again to ensure there are no more queen cells and see if we had a new queen from the time of the original split. What I found was there is no queen no brood at all, and the workers are backfilling everything with nectar since we are in flow.

My question is why do we think that the colony would send off swarms without being queenright? Why wouldn’t one of the virgins kill the others and establish herself as head of the colony? Biologically this seems like it would put the colony at a disadvantage if the virgins have left, and there were no more queen cells to be hatched. I did find one queen cell left in my hive and so I’m hoping that she makes it.

Swarming pic for bee tax 🐝

I have been trying to keep this hive from swarming for over a month now. They continue to run out of space because this is our second year and we’re still trying to build out a good supply of comb. Did a split a month or so ago and couldn’t find the queen but got a second nuc going that is doing well. A week later they were making queens like mad so we dug through every frame and found the OG queen and made a small split. I wasn’t sure if they’d make it, but they’re doing good too. Then about an hour after inspecting the hive on the right we see this.

They were piled on the front of the hive deep so we thought we might find the queen there. Gave them a little smoke and dig through the bees but couldn’t find here. They took off into the air and were flying everywhere for about 20 min and then they just stopped. Now it’s back to totally normal foraging traffic.

We’ve seen heavy orienting and bearding and this was definitely not either of those things. Assuming they’ll try again tomorrow. Not really wanting to try and split them at this moment because they just won’t stop and I’m not convinced it will help at this point. Someone said it could be a virgin flight? Anyone else have that kind of experience?

SW MO. Slovenian style insulated hives. 2nd year beekeeper. Will try to post second video in the comments if I can.

Update: they swarmed first thing this morning thankfully in a tree we could reach!!

Just picked up this bad boy at Costco. Looking for suggestions for fun recipes that will complement it!