Getting Swarmy

I had a feeling I was going to be late inspecting my hives, but between work and the weather, I didn’t a chance to get to it until today.  As I had feared, one of my booming hives in the outyard had sealed swarm cells.

It looked like they hadn’t swarmed yet so I took a few frames of brood, a bunch of extra bees and found the old queen.  I moved them into a new hive in my back yard.

Hopefully they will think they have swarmed, and all will be good.  But, there’s always the chance of having 2 queens and I only removed one.  I doubt that is the case as I made it through 27 of 30 frames before I found the one I did.  There is also the chance that they have just made up their mind to swarm and once the cells start hatching they will leave with one of the virgins.

I reversed all the other hives and added supers.  There weren’t any swarm cells I saw in the other hives, so for those I hope I was early enough to do some prevention.

I’m trying some of the things Mike Palmer suggested in a presentation given to the Prince William Regional Beekeepers Association.  You can see it on line http://vimeo.com/20202284