# Multile Swarms from one hive



## tgmarkey (May 20, 2013)

Hi All,

This is my first post. This is my 3rd spring of bee keeping and each year is different. I have 2 hives and have started a 3rd about 3 weeks ago with a caught swarm.

This year I have one hive that is swarming like crazy. It seems every 2 days or so it swarms. I know it's the same hive because I can see it happening. 

I've caught 4 of them and have not reintroduced those swarms into the existing hive but plan to do so eventually. 

Question...is this normal? I've read that if a hive swarms any additional queen cells are destroyed. That doesn't seem to be the case here as it is swarming all the time. It's a healthy hive...although i'm afraid honey production will be down due to the frequent loss of bees.

any thoughts appreciated.
Thanks,
-TGM


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

Secondary swarms, or _afterswarms_, are not unusual. There's some info on afterswarms on Michael Bush's page on swarming:

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm

One key difference is that the primary swarm is normally headed by a mated queen. Afterswarms usually have virgin queens.


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## NCBeekeeper (Apr 4, 2013)

I am no expert at this, but I had multiple hives swarm multiple times. I also witnessed a swarm hive already swarm this Sunday. They were honey bound and the guy I gave them too only had 2 supers on it and they have already filled it up. These girls can fill a box up in no time. Luckly we caught her and got him another hive.

But back to the first question. I have had to research afterswarms really big time this year. In my opionion Afterswarms is the bees controlling population if the original swarm didn't take as many bee's as they would like.


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## tgmarkey (May 20, 2013)

Thanks for the link. I'm familiar with secondary swarms although these most recent swarms have been on the larger side.

I do need to do a better job of checking for queen cells. I try not to crack open the bottom supers too much during this time as not to disturb what's going on in the hive. 

Every season seems to be different so far...a very interesting hobby!

thanks,
-TGM


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Some hives will swarm themselves to death. IMO that is what constitutes "swarmy bees". A hive swarming is just how they reproduce. But some seem to just keep going until they are burned out...

http://www.bushfarms.com/huber.htm#letter9


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

We had one hive we thought did exactly that last summer, swarmed itself to death. It's at a location that's a decent drive, on a friends farm, so we dont get out there much. Went out one day mid summer, and found almost no bees in it, with a whole bunch of empty queen cells. I was starting to tear it apart for the trip home into the garage, and use as 'spare gear', when my wife picked up a frame, and saw a queen cell in the process of emerging. So, we left an emerging queen cell in a double deep, along with maybe 500 bees, and 16 drawn frames, 4 as yet not touched. When we went back to look in September, I expected a dead hive. What we found was, 20 fully drawn frames and a double deep chocker block full of bees. We left them again.

This year, that hive has built out 2 supers, and is overflowing with bees. They may swarm again, but, we dont have the gear / time to deal with splits and / or swarms, so we will just leave them, and see where they end up. The last time I looked, they had 2 supers, mostly full of nectar, very little capped. It'll be at least a month before I get out there again, we are moving next week, and I just wont be able to make the time to get out and check on them for a few weeks.


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