# Will a hive swarm before the new queens hatch?



## BeeGora (Oct 22, 2013)

I have a TBH that was crammed full of bees and had produced queen cells on some of the combs. I was waiting for the queen's to emerge thinking that they wouldn't swarm until the new queens were hatched. Despite the fact that I was keeping a close eye on them, they apparently swarmed yesterday when I wasn't home. The queen cells are still intact but the hive has a lot less bees now. So will an old queen take off before the new queens ever hatch out?:scratch:


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## Jadeguppy (Jul 19, 2017)

Yes. They will often swarm around when the cell is sealed.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Yes, they usually swarm when the queen cells are capped. If you were waiting for them to hatch you waited too long to split them before they swarmed (if that was your goal.)

In a case of supercedure, however, the old queen often remains until after the new queen has been out and gotten mated. After that, though the old queen often disappears, though sometimes she stays around for awhile longer.

The trick of course is determining what is going on when you see queen cells being built. In a Lang swarm cells are often hanging off the bottom edges of the combs, while supercedure cells tend to appear more on the faces and edges (especially with foundationless combs) of the frames. 

But queen cell position isn't at all definitive. I recently assessed a hive as being prepping to swarm (persistent rebuild of charged queen cells on the bottom edges of frames.) All my hives were at the time awash in nectar so backfilling brood areas wasn't a reliable sign. And although not the large number of them usually seen with swarms, there were always at least five or six. So I divided the colony with a Snelgrove board, using a Method II manipulation and when I went to complete the final step, it became clear that was going on was actually a supercedure, not swarm preps, notwithstanding that the only cells made beforehand were in the "swarm" location. Oh, well. No harm done, just more work than necessary for me. 

Although I only use Langs, the info about when a swarm leaves relative to cell capping will be the same in TBH.

Nancy


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Swarms can be either primary or secondary swarms. With a primary swarm, the swarm generally leaves the hive with the old queen before the queen cell(s) emerge. _IF_ there is to be a secondary swarm, that occurs _after_ one of the new queens emerges from her cell. The secondary swarm would be headed by one of those newly emerged virgin queens.

Whether or not a secondary swarm occurs depends on the colony workers. They can prevent emerged virgins from killing the other virgins (emerged or not) to enable one or more secondary swarms ... or they might not, resulting in just the primary swarm headed by the original queen.

See the paragraph heading "Colony Equilibrium" for more:
http://www.beeculture.com/whats-happening-hive/


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## texanbelchers (Aug 4, 2014)

Since the question has been well and appropriately answered, I'll be a bit pedantic. All of the bee eggs "hatch" on or about day 3 after they are laid. Depending on the caste they "emerge" at 16(Queen), 21(worker), or 24(Drone) days after. I'm constantly correcting myself on this.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

@TexanBelchers,

You're not being pedantic at all - and that's a very good point to make because it sharpens my understanding of the biology involved. If I knew the HTML code for strike throughs, I would fix my post with that. But as I don't, I'll just leave my sloppy wording up there. 

Nancy


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Technically, the Beesource implementation of vBulletin does not allow users to use HTML code, but users can use _BB Code_. One can review the various BBCode options available at Beesource by clicking on the "BB Code is on" link further down this page, or click here: http://www.beesource.com/forums/misc.php?do=bbcode
However, strikeout is not one of the text effects enabled at Beesource. One could use the text color option, though. Perhaps a light color for the 'strikeout' text would suffice. Example: strikeout text; not strikeout.

Note the 'gray' text above. One can use the text color option by highlighting the text and then using the Text Color button (look for the big "A" in the toolbar); or like all the other text effects type the BBCode directly. Here is what the actual BBCode for my example above looks like in the Compose Message window:

Example: strikeout text; not strikeout.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Will a hive swarm before the new queens hatch?

Usually a week before the first new queen emerges. Afteswarms could happen every day after that.


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## BeeGora (Oct 22, 2013)

Thanks for the information. I’m always learning something new on this board.


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