# Which queen swarms, old or new?



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

In the prime (first) swarm, the old queen leaves, leaving behind queen cells that will develop into the new queen(s). If more than one new queen emerges (these are virgin queens) then additional cast casts swarms may leave with a virgin and more bees from the hive.

Enj


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## kilocharlie (Dec 27, 2010)

Some exceptions occur - Swarm conditions usually see the old queen leave, but sometimes a queen needs superceding during swarm season. Occasionally you will see 2 queens, usually mother and daughter queens, laying in the same hive. 

If a mother queen can lay but cannot fly, the daughter queen may leave.

With excessive breeding for gentleness, sometimes 2 daughter queens may leave or stay. I have caught 2 separate sister swarms within 3 feet of one another. We're breeding the fighting instinct out of them.

By marking your queens with numbering discs, you'll begin to get the idea of what your bees have done.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

I did not give that situation a chance to play out this spring. For the first time ever, her hive had swarm cells. They were capped, but she was still there and still laying eggs. Normally she would already be gone. Still laying suggests she was not prepared to fly. We put her in a nuc, raised 2 extra queens from the queen cells, and let the hive raise one of the queens.

I would say this was really a supersedure, but she's still alive and well, back in her breeding nuc, and had too much brood on her last inspection. We've robbed brood frames from her several times this summer. Possibly the daughter would have left, possible the old queen would have been killed.

We classify these bees as quite gentle. We routinely work them without smoke.

In our other swarm this year, the textbook was right, the old queen flew the coupe, the new one took over.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

From reading here sometimes the virgin will swarm but most of
the time the old queen will. Yes, we mark our queens to identify
which year on which color queen. It is also for swarm identification
purpose. Since I have too many new queens that look the same this year, I
decided to mark them after all. This will help to tell the difference from
next year's new queens. Then again you cannot really tell the difference if you
don't mark them all.


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