They swarmed!

When I got home from work yesterday I was depressed to discover that my bees had swarmed. They settled on the garage roof and have been there ever since. (The picture on the bottom shows the swarm. The picture on the top shows two queen cells; they're the peanut shaped things sticking out of the bottom of the frame.) Unfortunately, I have no extra woodenware so I guess they're going to become a feral hive. Otherwise I'd take the opportunity to hive them. I can't figure out why they swarmed. There seemed to be plenty of room in the brood frames although the upper hive body is honey bound. I guess I'm a victim of my own success.

I opened the hive this afternoon and pulled the Apistan strips. Pulling apart the two brood boxes I noticed several queen cells had been built between the upper and lower boxes. These were ripped in half. Oops. I inspected the frames, however, and found several other queen cells throughout the frames. There must be close to a dozen all told. I saw no eggs or larvae, but there was some capped brood. The old queen must have stopped laying eggs in preparation for swarming a while back. I'll have to see if the new queen mates and begins laying in the next few weeks. I'll post on the beemaster forum to see if it's best to let nature take its course, or order a new queen. Next year I'll have to do more to prevent another swarm.

Viable Queen

Apparently her majesty is all right. Even though it was cloudy and cool I opened up the hive yesterday and found young, uncapped brood. Obviously she is still laying although, again, I couldn't see eggs what with the dark comb and cloudy sky. I did pay for my impatience with several stings on the hands so today they've blown up like balloons. Last night I could barely make a fist. The girls certainly were defensive yesterday. I removed the hive top feeder and the picture shows the large number of bees in it crawling back into the hive.

Viable Queen?

I inspected the brood frames this afternoon looking for signs of an active queen. I saw capped drone brood which I didn't see last week and frames of capped worker brood. I saw larvae in various stages of growth. I did not see any eggs, but the comb is getting somewhat dark so my eyes may not be good enough to pick out eggs on it anyway. There were no supersedure cells. The hive seems to be running normally with lots of pollen coming in today and lots of foraging going on. I take this to mean that Her Majesty is still viable, but I'll check again in a week.

Oops

On Monday the 27th I added the last dose of Tetra-Bee which necessitated removing the top hive body and feeder. As I leaned over to replace the hive body I noticed the queen on the ground all by herself. She crawled onto my hive tool, and I placed her on the top frame of one of the brood frames where she was immediately surrounded by really interested workers. I'm hoping she wasn't damaged and I will open up the hive today, pending warm weather, and look to see if she's laying eggs. She was awesome last year. Quick build up was followed by extreme productivity in the workers. I was actually able to harvest honey from a first year hive. If I do have to replace her I'll order a new queen from H&R Apiaries in Jessup, Georgia from whom I purchased my bees last year.