# Failed swarm control split - worried about laying workers



## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Go take a look. 3 swarms over 4 days, the hive may be close to empty. I'd go take a look myself.


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## COAL REAPER (Jun 24, 2014)

next time try leaving the queen in original location with one frame of larvae and the rest empty comb or better yet even foundation if you need more drawn. then start additional colonies as needed with all the other frames of brood and QCs. combine back in 3-4 weeks when you figure out which ones mated successfully. this prevents the original hive with all the foragers from casting virgin swarms as you have been seeing.


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## ursa_minor (Feb 13, 2020)

I had the same problem as you last year, 3 swarms. Next time if you take the queen leave only one queen cell, I know it is hard to not leave ourselves some insurance but loosing multiple swarms and delaying the reorganization of the bees is harder on the hive.

But you asked what to do now, not what you should have done. I would wait and trust the bees, if there is a virgin in the hive adding a queen or a cell would be a waste of time. However, if you are worried you could just 'borrow' some eggs from the nuc to see if they build a queen cell. With foundation less, or wax foundation, I have seen Roger Patterson do a 'punch' method of transferring a cut out of a few eggs from one frame to another. I am not sure how it is done on wax foundation but at least you do not take the whole frame of eggs, just a cut out piece of it.


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## jwin (8 mo ago)

RayMarler said:


> Go take a look. 3 swarms over 4 days, the hive may be close to empty. I'd go take a look myself.


I was actually in the hive earlier in the day before the swarm. It was still packed with bees. This was a super strong hive.


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## jwin (8 mo ago)

COAL REAPER said:


> next time try leaving the queen in original location with one frame of larvae and the rest empty comb or better yet even foundation if you need more drawn. then start additional colonies as needed with all the other frames of brood and QCs. combine back in 3-4 weeks when you figure out which ones mated successfully. this prevents the original hive with all the foragers from casting virgin swarms as you have been seeing.


Thanks! In hindsight I definitely should have split the hive into multiple colonies. Even after my small split, it was just too crowded. I was trying to preserve my chance of a honey harvest but I didn't even think about the possibility of recombining the colonies that didn't yield a mated queen. That could have solved my crowding problem while still maximizing my chance of a honey harvest.


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## jwin (8 mo ago)

ursa_minor said:


> I had the same problem as you last year, 3 swarms. Next time if you take the queen leave only one queen cell, I know it is hard to not leave ourselves some insurance but loosing multiple swarms and delaying the reorganization of the bees is harder on the hive.
> 
> But you asked what to do now, not what you should have done. I would wait and trust the bees, if there is a virgin in the hive adding a queen or a cell would be a waste of time. However, if you are worried you could just 'borrow' some eggs from the nuc to see if they build a queen cell. With foundation less, or wax foundation, I have seen Roger Patterson do a 'punch' method of transferring a cut out of a few eggs from one frame to another. I am not sure how it is done on wax foundation but at least you do not take the whole frame of eggs, just a cut out piece of it.


Thank you, that's a good idea! I can always move the brood back if they don't do anything with it but that would give me some brood pheromone to give me some insurance against laying workers.

I had a colony with a weak queen going into winter last year that was laying worker by this spring and I'd really like to avoid that if at all possible.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

jwin said:


> I'm worried, however, that the hive hasn't had open brood in at least nine days at this point and that if there's NOT a laying queen when I check in three weeks that I may already be to a point where laying workers start developing. At that point it seems like requeening with a purchased queen or combining with the split I made would no longer be viable options.


too soon to worry.
likely when you took the old queen out they made more cells from eggs.
so in 4 days the last of the queens should be hatched 12 + 4 =16.
2 weeks to harden , mate, and start laying.
in the midst of swarming they take longer than 9 days to go LW.

if you are good at finding queens she should be there next week.
too much mucking around can be bad for a new queen.

I'd give them a couple weeks, then check, you always have the old queen to merge back.
or you could purchase a queen if needed.

Next time try the other way, leave the old queen and 1 or 2 frames with sealed brood.
take the rest of the hive away. add empty comb or foundation to the old hive, to fill the box, add a super to hold the field bees in case there are a lot.

then 3 days after the cells are capped go in and make the splits, 2 or 3 depending on how many bees and cells.

the old bees are the ones that "want" to swarm, you left them all at the old location with all the brood, so they made queens and swarmed till they they were content.

good luck

GG


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## jwin (8 mo ago)

Gray Goose said:


> too soon to worry.
> likely when you took the old queen out they made more cells from eggs.
> so in 4 days the last of the queens should be hatched 12 + 4 =16.
> 2 weeks to harden , mate, and start laying.
> in the midst of swarming they take longer than 9 days to go LW.


I hadn't thought about them making new cells after I pulled the queen but that makes sense. They cast two additional swarms today (one of which I caught) and it sounds like I may be in for another few days of swarming unless the number of remaining bees drops enough that they don't want to cast anymore swarms.

On the laying worker side I definitely understand it's too early to worry now. Everything I've read about laying workers says it takes almost a month to become a problem. I guess my concern was more about what happens when I check in two weeks. At that point it'll be right around four weeks without open brood in the hive. If there's not a laying queen at that point am I in a "get one in there as quickly as possible but it'll be OK" situation or is it more of a "you might already have laying workers and fixing the problem is no sure thing" kind of situation? 



Gray Goose said:


> the old bees are the ones that "want" to swarm, you left them all at the old location with all the brood, so they made queens and swarmed till they they were content.


Thank you for this! This makes a ton of sense and I hadn't thought about it this way at all. I really appreciate the information and it'll definitely change how I handle this type of situation in the future!


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

keep the cast swarm let that queen mate.
then you have 2 queens to split to old hive up and add back, if it ends up queen less.
you are likely close to the end of swarming.

good luck with the queen mating.

GG


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