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The battery died, it took us around 1.5 hours. You need to wait for the nurse bees to cluster around the queen then you put her and the cluster in a hive body with frames.
This is the cluster, they gather around the queen. There are two clusters. We had to block the light with the foam board they are looking for a dark area. It is really neat to watch them crawl up the board and over the edge. The workers all fly back to the original hive around a foot away.
Due to our record breaking 20 straight days of measurable rain, the hives have been house bound. They get bored. they get feeling crowded, they eat up their stores, they decide it is time to do a population divide. So they start making queen cells, swarm cells. When we inspected their hives, there was around 15 swarm cells, queens in the making.
That was the day before we did this. On this day, we found around 6 uncapped empty swarm cells, i.e. the queens had hatched. But it was rainy cold wet windy, they need two days of sun to mate. So for a bit the old queen might live with the virgin queen, there may be more than one virgin in the hive. The strongest will survive. They sting each other to death. The old queen usually loses the battle, they are not as flexible as the young queen so can't bend and sting.
Usually the swarm happens long before the virgin queens hatch. But weather is delaying the swarm. The next sunny day, which is Friday, they would have swarmed.
So the long and short answer, we took the clusters, might be the old queen under one, a virgin under another, were all carefully dumped into the hive body we had below them. The hive body was taken over and set up as a hive. two boxes, frames, and food. They might abscond, ie leave, but last check they were still in the box. So it was a success. Now in two weeks we need to check for eggs larvae etc. Then it really is a success. Ae we need to check the worker box with all the swarm cells to make sure one of the queens hatches and starts making babies.
So in their bee brains they swarmed, they will not try to swarm again, we are almost out of swarm season. Once nectar flow starts they forget about swarming.
This is the cluster, they gather around the queen. There are two clusters. We had to block the light with the foam board they are looking for a dark area. It is really neat to watch them crawl up the board and over the edge. The workers all fly back to the original hive around a foot away.
Due to our record breaking 20 straight days of measurable rain, the hives have been house bound. They get bored. they get feeling crowded, they eat up their stores, they decide it is time to do a population divide. So they start making queen cells, swarm cells. When we inspected their hives, there was around 15 swarm cells, queens in the making.
That was the day before we did this. On this day, we found around 6 uncapped empty swarm cells, i.e. the queens had hatched. But it was rainy cold wet windy, they need two days of sun to mate. So for a bit the old queen might live with the virgin queen, there may be more than one virgin in the hive. The strongest will survive. They sting each other to death. The old queen usually loses the battle, they are not as flexible as the young queen so can't bend and sting.
Usually the swarm happens long before the virgin queens hatch. But weather is delaying the swarm. The next sunny day, which is Friday, they would have swarmed.
So the long and short answer, we took the clusters, might be the old queen under one, a virgin under another, were all carefully dumped into the hive body we had below them. The hive body was taken over and set up as a hive. two boxes, frames, and food. They might abscond, ie leave, but last check they were still in the box. So it was a success. Now in two weeks we need to check for eggs larvae etc. Then it really is a success. Ae we need to check the worker box with all the swarm cells to make sure one of the queens hatches and starts making babies.
So in their bee brains they swarmed, they will not try to swarm again, we are almost out of swarm season. Once nectar flow starts they forget about swarming.
