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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
  • To: Richard Brown <richardcameronbrown AT gmail.com>, ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Swarm to Nuc Integration
  • Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2016 17:29:23 -0400

Rick,

Remember, the colony gets the queen down to flying-fitness before they swarm. She gets skinnier and she stops laying. So 3 days after you hived the swarm, I'm not surprised that you don't see lots of evidence of a queen. At most, if she has re-started laying, there will eggs but they are very difficult to see on new pearly-white wax. And if this is a secondary swarm, it may be with a virgin -- if so she'll need time to mate and then will need a few days beyond that to start laying.

So I would lay odds that she is there, just as she is supposed to be, unless after another week you still don't see any brood at all.

If you want to combine this colony with another in a week and a half, one option is to just do a newspaper combine as you would with any other combine. That's your choice/your decision. If I were going to do that, I would think about plucking the queen out of one of those colonies before combining them and offering her for sale -- queens are going for $25 to $30 or more this season.

Randall

On 4/20/2016 3:56 PM, Richard Brown wrote:

Good day OCBA,
Last week I collected a secondary swarm of about 8000 honey bees. I housed them in a ten frame deep swarm trap with ten frames foundation installed. After 3 days I checked them and found a considerable amount of comb drawn and they were starting to fill it with nectar and pollen. I did not see a queen or any signs of one being present. I will check again at the end of this week.
I of course have the option of installing a Queen however I'm thinking I might use them to augment 5 frame nucs that I will be getting the 1st of May.
I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how best to do this.
Here is a video of the swarm "collection".

https://youtu.be/Rl5QYTKWc_M

Thanks,
Rick Brown



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