# mating flight turned into primary swarm?



## mtnmyke (Apr 27, 2017)

You probably missed a cell. Did you shake all the bees off every frame to verify? Swarm cells are certainly not always on the bottom of frames. If they had a nearby cup ready they could have used that as a cell as well, which is easily hidden by the bees if you don't shake them all off.

I've certainly made that mistake in the past. When I shook all the frames immediately realized my error. Oops.

Your plan is good. Keep the swarm as a new hive and add eggs to the other. If they draw cells then they didn't have a virgin. If they have a virgin in there they should treat it like regular brood.


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## dloucky (May 5, 2020)

mtnmyke said:


> You probably missed a cell. Did you shake all the bees off every frame to verify? Swarm cells are certainly not always on the bottom of frames. If they had a nearby cup ready they could have used that as a cell as well, which is easily hidden by the bees if you don't shake them all off.
> 
> I've certainly made that mistake in the past. When I shook all the frames immediately realized my error. Oops.
> 
> Your plan is good. Keep the swarm as a new hive and add eggs to the other. If they draw cells then they didn't have a virgin. If they have a virgin in there they should treat it like regular brood.



I suppose it's possible I missed a cell, but I don't think so. I culled out cells on two separate occasions after the split, leaving just the one capped cell. After yesterday's swarm I rechecked all frames and only saw the one cell, showing normal bottom emergence. In any case, both the swarm and the parent colony have a frame of eggs/larvae, and I'll check those for cell building in the next few days. The bees will inform me for sure!


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