# Swarm cell found, now how to prevent swarming?



## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Is it possible the queen wasn't able to be found because she's already left with a swarm? I thought they typically left when the first cell was capped?

Michael Palmer talks about looking for emerging brood in a decent sized patch and checking the cells in that area for eggs in a hive that you suspect might have swarmed. The idea being that the queen likes these areas to lay in (lots of young bees?).


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## DPBsbees (Apr 14, 2011)

How about attaching an excluder to the bottom of a box and shake the bees through it looking for the queen as I beliieve Michael Palmer uses to build cell builders?


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

jwcarlson said:


> Is it possible the queen wasn't able to be found because she's already left with a swarm? I thought they typically left when the first cell was capped?
> 
> Michael Palmer talks about looking for emerging brood in a decent sized patch and checking the cells in that area for eggs in a hive that you suspect might have swarmed. The idea being that the queen likes these areas to lay in (lots of young bees?).


It is possible that the hive already swarmed. I will check the original hive in a few days for eggs, and that should tell me if the hive had already swarmed.

Good suggestion to look for eggs among emerging brood, too.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

shinbone said:


> It is possible that the hive already swarmed. I will check the original hive in a few days for eggs, and that should tell me if the hive had already swarmed.


Isn't it early for swarms for you? I don't know Denver's climate well... are there good numbers of drones available now?


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Might be supercedure and the queen is gone already.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Yes, it is early for swarms in our area. I was indeed caught a little off guard by the queen cells. And, there are drones, now. I spotted the first drones in my apiary about 10 days ago, and I saw lots of drones during my inspection yesterday.

I believe my early feeding advanced the swarm clock for my apiary. This was expected, and, was the accepted risk. I thought I could keep the swarming under control by Demareeing, but it turns out, that is not as easy as I had expected. (insert dope slap symbol here).



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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

JRG13 said:


> Might be supercedure and the queen is gone already.


Yes, I thought about that possibility, too. Unfortunately, I am not sure how old this queen is. 

(I am doing a better job now of tracking queen source and age than I did when I first got this hive 2 years ago.)




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## Tim B (Apr 16, 2009)

It helps to mark and clip the queens. Pick a bright color that isn't natural to the hive. The deep reds or road line yellow really don't show up as well as a bright green or baby blue. testors model paint gives you more choices than the markers. It is also easier to gauge the amount of paint you are applying vs. a marker tip but both will work. Once you mark, she'll be a lot easier to find. You also need to clip because they will finally just take off if she isn't above an excluder. Check every afternoon for queens on the ground around the hive. If I had the case you had I have cut the cells and placed an excluder under the whole stack and maybe between a couple of boxes and then returned three day later to find her. She'll be wherever the eggs are. In your case you probably did the right thing in splitting. The split should produce honey without trying to swarm for the rest of the season. They usually will draw comb better as well. The side with the old queen will probably keep trying to swarm.


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## fieldsofnaturalhoney (Feb 29, 2012)

"My question is: In a booming hive with freshly capped queen cells, when you can't find the queen, is there anything that can be done to prevent swarming and keep the hive together?"

In my experience, no there isn't IF they are swarm cells. The excluder idea would work, but you would have a lot of angry bees, and that would/could take a while. Even with your feed (which doesn't seem like that much to me), I am not convinced they are swarm cells (this would be about 3 weeks early for the area). However, time will tell, as she always does


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## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

I think she may have left already. A hive doesn't look like a ghost town after a primary swarm leaves. Apparently the Queen leaves after the cells are capped.
I also had thought that the time start with the Demarre plan was well before the hive is thinking of swarming. One Demarres the hive and then if still in swRm season a month later you do it all again.
Great your hives are doing so well.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Everyone - Thanks for all the great feedback.

I guess there were 4 possible situations I was looking:

1) The capped queen cells were swarm cells, hive had not swarmed, I overlooked the queen;
2) The capped queen cells were swarm cells, the hive had swarmed;
3) The capped queen cells were supercedure cells, I overlooked the soon-to-be replaced queen; or,
4) The capped queen cells were supercedure cells, and the queen was already dead/gone.

I didn't consider #3 and #4 as options because the queen has been laying really strong.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I had a strong overwintered nuc, 5 over 5 over 5.... I found cells one day and no queen, population was still strong, some eggs here and there. I don't think they swarmed, ended up making 3 splits plus the original. Never did find her, assumed she got superceded although I saw nothing wrong with her pattern. If they had swarmed, she didn't take many bees with her as all the frames were either honey/pollen, larvae or capped brood and eggs suggested she was laying 1-2 days prior and the hive was still packed with bees.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

WBVC said:


> I also had thought that the time start with the Demarre plan was well before the hive is thinking of swarming./QUOTE]
> 
> In my research, I had found plenty of info on the mechanics of how to Demaree, but nothing on the timing, and so I took my best guess. My plan was to Demaree when I started seeing backfilling in the brood nest, or a week before swarm season usually starts, whichever came first. Additionally, since the Demaree method fools a hive into thinking it has swarmed, my thinking is that it is effective pretty much anytime before a hive swarms and the beek has some room for timing errors.
> 
> ...


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## sultan (Aug 9, 2014)

Shinbone, I had the same situation a month ago and I destroyed the queen cells and (not knowing where the queen was) I just made a big split from the parent hive. Now both colonies are doing very well. May be I was lucky. I think you did the needed by immediately making split from it. 

May I ask you: What is Demaree method?


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

shinbone said:


> I destroyed two of the queen cells. I made a new hive consisting of the remaining 3 queen cells on the single frame,[/I]


It doesn't sound like you did the Demaree method in the first place. Anyway you couldn't find the queen and panic sets in. I feel for you. The only thing I would have done differently is split into three hives. You had the queen cells to do it. It sounds like you had eggs to leave the parent hive in case it was a supercedure. They might do it again if so. With the hive split in three it will be easier to find a queen or evidence of a queen.

Personally I think the Demaree method is a whole lot of work involving critical timing and not much of a guarantee it will work even if it is done right. I also feel if you feed like crazy in the spring you run the risk of filling up the brood nest and encourage a swarm. I think the primary key to swarm prevention is not letting the queen run out of space.


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## sterling (Nov 14, 2013)

Shinbone was there brood or eggs in the hive or was the brood nest backfilled with nectar? If there was brood or cells cleaned ready for queen to lay those cells very well could have been supercedure cells. Especially since there were just a few. But if most brood cells were full of nectar probably swarm cells.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Acebird said:


> It doesn't sound like you did the Demaree method in the first place.


Correct, I did not Demaree the hive. Since I couldn't find the queen, Demareeing wasn't an option, at least as I understand the method.

_


Acebird said:



Personally I think the Demaree method is a whole lot of work involving critical timing and not much of a guarantee it will work even if it is done right..

Click to expand...

_

I agree on the "whole lot of work", but, from my research, Demaree is very effective and quite timing insensitive.




sterling said:


> Shinbone was there brood or eggs in the hive or was the brood nest backfilled with nectar? If there was brood or cells cleaned ready for queen to lay those cells very well could have been supercedure cells. Especially since there were just a few. But if most brood cells were full of nectar probably swarm cells.


There was no noticeable backfilling. I did see lots of polished cells ready for eggs, but were empty.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

shinbone said:


> I agree on the "whole lot of work", but, from my research, Demaree is very effective and quite timing insensitive.


From the PDF that you linked to:


> It is important that Demaree’s method be applied at the correct time. The times will vary depending on the season and rate of building up and nectar source in the area (March in warmer climate, May in cooler climate).


After you find swarm cells it is a scramble no matter what method you use.


> There was no noticeable backfilling. I did see lots of polished cells ready for eggs, but were empty.


Then maybe it was a supercedure and the third split gives you an extra hive that you can combine if the parent goes queenless. Of course you can always combine the one you did split except you decided which cells to use for that one and maybe that doesn't work out so well. Splits are a gamble because only 75% of the queens make it back properly mated.


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## popeye (Apr 21, 2013)

Look up the many uses of a snelgrove board-welsh beekeepers assoc. There's a part in there on what to do if you can't find the queen and how to .it's a vertical split too with brood up top. Did you see any eggs? I also have a hard time finding queen.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Acebird - Interesting info that you found regarding timing using the Demaree method. My understanding is that if you Demaree a hive, and later the hive has built up enough, again, that it may swarm, you simply Demaree it again. This is what made me think it is not sensitive to timing.

popeye - Thanks for the info. Here's one link I found: http://barnsleybeekeepers.org.uk/snelgrove.html




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## popeye (Apr 21, 2013)

I believe day 1 step 6 is wrong on Barnsley sight. But on the 'many uses ' sight there's a good way to isolate queen that can be done for demaree too. 
Shake all brood combs that are to go up top into the bottom box on board. Put hive back together for demaree with the queen excluder under top brood box.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

popeye - excellent suggestion. Thanks!


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

shinbone said:


> My understanding is that if you Demaree a hive, and later the hive has built up enough, again, that it may swarm, you simply Demaree it again. This is what made me think it is not sensitive to timing.


Can't the same be said for splitting? If they show sings of swarming you just keep on splitting until you wear them down. You are just beating them into submission but there is a cost to doing that.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Acebird said:


> Can't the same be said for splitting?


Yes, I think you are correct. However, I am managing (or attempting to manage) my hives for maximum honey production. Accordingly, I am trying to make the hives big and then trying to keep them together. 

If my goal was increases, then splitting would indeed make perfect sense.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Swarm cell found

It's an oxymoron. No one finds *A* swarm cell...


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Michael Bush said:


> >Swarm cell found
> 
> It's an oxymoron. No one finds *A* swarm cell...


I agree! The title of the post has a typo.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

shinbone said:


> If my goal was increases, then splitting would indeed make perfect sense.


You goal was shot through the heart when you found the swarm cells. From then on it is damage control.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Acebird said:


> You goal was shot through the heart when you found the swarm cells. From then on it is damage control.


Yes. Yes. I guess I was hoping for a miracle, at that point.

My plan was that if the queen was still in the hive and I had found her, I could have prevented swarming by destroying all queen cells and Demareeing because Demareeing "fools" the hive into thinking it has swarmed.

But, if there was no queen, and those were swarm cells, the only options I had were to "let it ride" and risk loosing more bees to secondary swarms, or cut off further swarming by splitting.

This Friday will be 5 days after splitting. I will go into the mother hive and do a careful inspection looking for eggs and new queen cells. If I find no eggs or see new queen cells, then I will know I was looking for a non-existent queen in the original hive. 

I am also starting to wonder if maybe what I was seeing were not swarm cells but supercedure cells. None of my other large hives are showing any signs of swarm prep, so this hive would have been an anomaly being in swarm mode so early in the season. If they were supercedure cells, I should have just let the hive carry on undisturbed. Oh well.

I will report what I see after Friday's inspection. I am very curious at this point. Either way, this whole incident has been a learning experience for me. Frustrating, but educational.




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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

shinbone said:


> If I find no eggs or see new queen cells, then I will know I was looking for a non-existent queen in the original hive.


Wait a minute if you see new queen cells than there is a queen.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Acebird said:


> Wait a minute if you see new queen cells than there is a queen.[/QUOTE
> 
> Or, after I did the split, the hive made a queen out of the eggs that were already there.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

shinbone said:


> the hive made a queen out of the eggs that were already there.


That is my point. If there were eggs then there was a queen whether you saw her or not.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Got it. Thanks for the clarification.



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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

The following are quoted from another thread. It is good info on distinguishing between swarm cells and supercedure cells, and I so added here to make this thread more complete. Thanks to the original authors!




wcubed said:


> By the numbers:
> 
> 3 cells on 3 separate frames? Points to supersedure (SS). If that's all of them.
> Roughly the same age. SS.
> ...





JRG13 said:


> People need to stop making distinctions of cells based on location. When hives are getting ready to swarm or supercede, they make queen cells. If you go in, find a few cells, 1-5, and no queen it's pretty easy to figure out. The trick comes to guaging the intentions of the hive based on number of cells and what the queen is up to. . . . I had a few nice overwintered colonies make too many drones early and guess what happens when your drone population to worker population becomes off balance.... nice queens get axed..... but splits get made fairly easy.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Went into the mother hive, today. Didn't find any eggs or any queen cells. At least the reason why I couldn't find a queen when I did the original inspection is because she most likely wasn't there.

Went into the daughter hive. The three capped queen cells had not opened yet. Plus, that frame had an apparently new queen cell in a middle area of the frame. Didn't see any other queen cells. I had originally concluded these were swarm cells because, though they are in the middle of the frame, they are at the bottom of the built out comb.

Base on input on this thread and other threads, and that none of my other big strong hives have made any queen cells, I now believe these are supercedure cells, not swarms cells like I originally concluded. :doh: Consequently, I should not have split the hive. Rookie mistake!

Since the mother hive is now queenless and can't make a queen, I plan to do a re-combine to put everything back together. Like I should have left it. I have enough hives for now and so I'd rather have big hives than increases.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

When I'm in the same situation I plan on making a few mating nucs with small numbers of bees. Whatever happens, I hope to have some mated queens in my back pocket to fix whatever problem I created. I might shake a queen if I found her into a nuc box as well. What I don't want is afterswarm after afterswarm. I might try to recombine once the dust has settled if I wanted to do a honey crop.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

shinbone said:


> Went into the mother hive, today.


In the pics the comb doesn't look deep enough to raise brood and it doesn't look like capped honey to me.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

0


sultan said:


> Shinbone, I had the same situation a month ago and I destroyed the queen cells and (not knowing where the queen was) I just made a big split from the parent hive. Now both colonies are doing very well. May be I was lucky. I think you did the needed by immediately making split from it.
> 
> May I ask you: What is Demaree method?


See post #1 on this thread.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

The hives have now been recombined via a newspaper combine. All the queen cells but the two biggest were destroyed. I'll check for eggs in around 14 days or so.

Talk about making a lot of extra work for myself. sheesh.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Update:

I inspected the hive today. 10 days have elapsed between the last time I opened (for the recombine) the hive and today's inspection. This is the first day since the recombine that it has been warm enough to open the hive and pull frames for inspection.

Today's inspection showed no eggs, no open brood, no capped brood. Also, one of the two queen cells had hatched, but the second one (far right, in the photo) had not hatched. This unhatched queen cell is way past its hatch-date, and so was not a viable cell.

The queen cell that did hatch produced its queen at the beginning of about a week of cold, windy, snowy, rainy weather. I am thinking there is a good chance that this queen did not mate successfully, and that this hive is now effectively queenless.

I am now on the hunt for a new queen, which is not an easy proposition this time of year. Made 6 phone calls tonight with no luck. I will add a frame of eggs from another hive this weekend, but I hope I find a mated queen in the next few days to save myself about 4 weeks of time to get new brood going.

*Boy, what a soap opera.*






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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

That does suck but I would give it some more time. I did a split, didn't see brood for about 3 weeks, didn't see the queen cell. So I was distributing its resources about a week after I was convinced it was queenless. The honey went first, then all of a sudden I came across some newly capped brood. Tried to backtrack, but too late. I already lost the newly laying queen. I think you did the right thing in giving another batch of eggs. If they are queenless they should get another going and prevent laying workers. But its frustrating to see a colony milling around not being very motivated.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Thanks for the advice. The colony is four 10-frame medium boxes tall. This afternoon after work I will consolidate it down to 3 boxes. Don't want a potentially queenless hive with any empty combs. I will probably add 2 frames of eggs just to be sure I don't get a dreaded laying-worker situation. With two new frame of eggs, the colony should be good for another week, so I guess I can give it a little time before pursuing a new queen. I do hate taking resources from other hives, but this hive is so big I think it is worth it.

This hive was a great hive last year. This Spring, it built up really well to four 10-frame medium boxes of bees by late March, which is early for this area. Then, suddenly, *poof,* supersedure with hatch-out during bad weather. Now, I am in a holding pattern while things sort themselves out so I can decide whether it needs a new queen. I will have lost at least a month of growth, more if I have to install a new queen. Can't be avoided, though. If the bees want a new mama, I can't stop them. And, even though I totally flubbed identifying the supersedure and mistakenly split the hive and then recombined to fix my error, I think the weather is what hurt me in the end.




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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

If they don't start a new queen with the eggs you gave them, there is probably a queen running around not yet laying. Hope this is the case.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Yes. Except for the hive giving up the frame eggs, adding eggs is win-win.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

10 days is too early for a laying queen. I wait at least two weeks post emergence to even thing about checking for eggs, give it another week, I bet you'll be surprised.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

ilharder and JRG13 - Thanks for your inputs.

Using a spreadsheet, I made a dead-simple graphic calculator to _estimate_ when I should see eggs. Obviously, there are too many variables to do anything more than an estimate. I know this isn't a new idea, just what I cobbled together for my particular situation.

On the spreadsheet, I entered dates and the corresponding status of the observed queen cell and weather/weather prediction. Days with unfavorable mating weather, according to the conditions specified by the Glenn Apiaries breeding web site, are grayed-out. I also entered a queen development schedule from the Glenn Apiaries website. I then lined up the queen development schedule with what I had observed in the hive to create a window of when I might expect to see eggs. The window includes an earliest and a latest date when I should see new eggs, assuming best development and mating conditions, from the new queen.


Here is the estimate for the earliest I can expect to see new eggs. This based on the assumption that the queen hatched the day after I last saw the capped QC:












Here is the estimate for the latest I can expect to see new eggs. This based on the assumption that the queen cell was capped the day I first saw it:












Here is the final result filled into the spreadsheet:











It seems, under the best-case scenario, the earliest I should be seeing eggs would be April 23rd. Worst case, I won't be seeing eggs until the end of April or later, especially considering the poor mating weather. ilharder and JRG13 both had a good point about continuing to wait to see eggs. 

In any event, the weather window for good mating conditions is very narrow (about 2 days) due to the bad weather we have been having, and, then, the "good" days are at best only marginal. This according to the minimum mating conditions specified by the Glenn website. Consequently, if I do finally get a laying queen, I may considering requeening right away since her mating conditions suggest she does not have a good egg-laying future ahead of her.

Regardless, this is all speculation and guess-work, and I won't know the real story if and until I see eggs. It does help to have an idea of what to expect and when, though.





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## jwdeeming (Apr 22, 2014)

Sorry for your misadventures but i found this to be a very informative read. Thanks for posting!


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I hit the same issue with some emerging cells I found capped on a Friday.... they emerged yesterday which is 12 days post capping kind of late but they looked great.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

I'm about to embark on this adventure myself. Have my 1st queen cell that should be capped today from a poorly executed queen rearing attempt. At least she'll be well fed and the cell looks like a beauty. A good trial to see if she gets mated this early. Will be starting another batch in a week and hopefully get more than one. And yes I will modify my methods.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Did a quick check for eggs this afternoon before a thunderstorm rolled through. I examined the middle 4 frames of the two bottom boxes. No eggs!

A neighbor beek has a new queen coming in on Tuesday that she no longer needs. I will requeen the hive with this new queen.


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