Trying to manage swarming on a commercial scale is one of the more labor intensive aspects of the job. The short answer for most is, creating splits - especially if your operation is oriented toward pollination contracting.

The swarming impulse is not well understood; why it happens, what triggers it and the many smaller factors that influence it. Most folks just accept the answer that it's due to brood nest over crowding. That appears to be a main causative factor and one, most people can understand and "get their hands around."

Typically, the old queen leaves and the new queen stays behind. However, it's not quite that simple. If your hive 'throws off' multiple swarms (which is not uncommon), then of course, ultimately new queen(s) will depart (including virgin queens). And if your "old queen" has a clipped wing, this is no guarantee of keeping her either. There have been reports of such queens even trying to crawl away from the hive (supposedly due to the swarming impulse - though I've never seen that). More common, is that the old queen is eventually rejected and balled to death (which I have seen), thus making requeening of some fashion necessary. This is one reason that marked queens are very necessary (especially in AHB areas).

You've hit the nail on the head with your comments / concerns about the nature of the hive changing IF the new queen mates with AHB drones. This is the problem. Given the brood rearing cycle time and the natural replacement of the old foragers, you probably won't notice a discernable difference in the overall nature of the colony for about 45 to 60 days. Of course, by then, you're going to either have a good "normal" hive or one that's going to be a real problem.

Thanks, txbeeguy, so I'll hold my breath and wait anxiously for the next two months, looking for signs of aggressiveness. Great. Not my idea of a good time, but I didn't anticipate that the bees would fill an entire super in less than two months, especially in the dead of winter. Not that we have much winter here, but there are certainly fewer flowers in December and January than there will be by the middle of March. I'll be sorry to lose that old queen, she was the one I captured from the wild. Oh well, we'll see what happens--thanks for the heads up and the accompanying warning. I'll have to watch carefully for aggresseivenes--the local USDA person said that it is anticipated that 75% of all wild hives in San Diego county are africanized.

My father took up bee-keeping last June and has two hives, and a third spare.

Over the last three weeks, the bees from one of the hives have swarmed three times and have been put back in the hive from which they swarmed.

This morning the bees behaved as if they were swarming, but didn't 'ball' and went back to the hive. We thought that it may have been a virgin queen on a mating flight. A few hours later they swarmed again and balled in a nearby Budlea bush. My dad collected them in a box and put them in the spare hive. This is where the mystery begins as when he later checked it, the bees had deserted it. We didn't see them swarm again so we assumed that they had gone back to thier original hive. My dad checked that hive but couldn't find a queen. He reported that there was hardly any brood in it and he had found three swarms cells and destroyed them.

What I don't understand is a) why they swarmed with so few brood cells (although there is certainly 30lbs + of honey in the hive) and dad had put on an extra super, and b) where did the queen go?

Could it be that she upped and left anyway after the scouts had found a more suitable home? Did my dad make an error of judgement when he destroyed the swarm cells?

I am confused! If anybody has any knowledge that can help, it would be gratefully received :)

Thanks

>>Over the last three weeks, the bees from one of the hives have swarmed three times and have been put back in the hive from which they swarmed.These could have been after swarms with virgin queens?

>>My dad checked that hive but couldn't find a queen. He reported that there was hardly any brood in it and he had found three swarms cells and destroyed them.Why would you destroy them if you seen no queen?
I'm still a newbie...5 years, but never killed swarm cells, by doing it you can run into the problem of a hive being queen less.

>>What I don't understand is a) why they swarmed with so few brood cells This makes sense, the queen stopped laying,.. getting ready to swarm.

Konrad

Here is a link that might be useful: swarming

Thanks Konrad.

I did think myself that killing the cells was a mistake and too hasty. I wish I'd said something now!

Thank you for the link too. I'll have a look at it now.