Artificial swarm but cannot find the Queen?

[Poly Hive]

Sorry Afermo but you are wrong here.

The first virgin queen will indeed kill the other cells..........IF the bees allow her.

Be very careful with sweeping statements as although some of this is in the books, sadly a lot of the books parrot rubbish like....... if there are sealed cells the bees have swarmed.... uh huh... complete tosh.

PH

 

[Erichalfbee]

Best weather forecast site I have found is the Norwegian weather service at Yr.no ,

Yes, I have that one......I have them all infact
Whoop Whoop Whoop.........Sunday to Friday sun sun sun
Sorry, nothing to do with the OP but I'm moving house Thursday/Friday and at least it won't rain on my belongings going into storage.......so exciting!

 

[Erichalfbee]

IF the bees allow her.

Yes, bees can guard emerging cells.
Opened an association hive last year,disturbing them obviously and eight queen cells opened up .....

 

[beach]

Destroyed ~20 sealed QCs yesterday. Did not see queen, but apparently has not swarmed and was laying eggs up to ~4days ago. Was not ready to use these cells.

Can I wait 7 days before attempting an Artificial Swarm, OR is swarm imminent, no matter what? Queen is unclipped and unmarked, have never seen her.

 

[Erichalfbee]

You say she was laying 4 days ago....ie you can see small larvae.
Can you see eggs?
Sounds like she's gone and you've just made the hive queenless if you got all the QCs.
Bees can make QCs on 4 day old larvae but no later.

 

[beach]

No eggs seen, unfortunately. And I may have made the hive queenless and have to deal with that.

BUT, for arguments sake, supposing the queen was still there due to e.g. bad weather, what next?

I mean, I am where I am (due to being unready to do anything with the sealed QCs).

What would you do? What's the best option now?

 

[Poly Hive]

Ok assume the weather is bad and you know you are in swarm mode.

I would ignore the weather and AS but I have VERY good protective equipment.

So it comes back to how much hassle and pain are you willing to inflict on the bees and yourself to save a mere swarm?

PH

 

[beach]

Many thanks. My feelings of management failure or unreadiness motivate me to try and save a swarm.

Thanks for the advice - I won't go at them in the usual jeans and bee-jacket then.