July 20th Swarm Followup

Well I probably should have waited long to check in on my swarms but I needed to know what was going on so a quick check aught to give me some idea.

Swarm 1 (the original, originally larger than a basketball):

When I popped open this box I realized it had shrunk by an incredible amount of bee's.  Best estimation now was I was down to about a large grapefruit sized swarm.  That worried me that there'd be no queen left behind.  I didn't have any frames of egg's that matched up to the hive body size so I went to the hive they swarmed from and cutout two of the queen cells they were too close together to only get one.  I sat it between two frames at the top and crossed my fingers.  If there was a queen these poor ladies were probably going to be killed but I wanted to be sure a queen was there.  I also had 16 queen cells in the hive they swarmed from all capped and good to go.

Swarm 2 (originally baseballish sized):

This one seemed to be doing quite well I had given them a frame of nectar, 1 foundation, 1 foundation-less, and 1 capped honey.  While probably not the best for this swarm I'm kicking myself left and right for not just sticking with 1 size hive bodies.  Next spring I will only have mediums these deeps are ticking me off.  I didn't observe any eggs but it had only been 4 days since swarming.  However to be on the safe side I gave them 2 queen cells as well.


It's not real promising that these are going to result to much being so late in the year but we shall see I may start feeding to help them out.  I'm a tad hesitant to feed after reading more of Michael Bush's work but to get these guys through the winter I may not have a choice especially with the drought we've had.

I got my new equipment 15 new mediums and frames, overkill maybe but I'd rather be prepared next year instead of run out of equipment.  I also picked up 4 nuc hive body's so I could move the ladies out of the plastic home that probably isn't all the best for them.  They seem to be doing all right but we'll get them moved around soon.

Also since I had the extra nuc bodies I decided to take a frame of honey and some partially drawn frames plus a queen cell frame from the hive that swarmed and drop them into the nuc.  I figure this way with 4 hives sending out queens hopefully at least 2 of them will mate properly and start building up then I can combine any of the failures.

All the ladies will get a 2 week reprieve from my intrusions since next week I have a house party and will have too many guest to be stirring up the queen-less hives.