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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Dave Gould" <dave.gould AT da.org>
  • To: blair.christian AT gmail.com
  • Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] two swarms question
  • Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2012 16:13:01 -0400

so all this talk about swarming has me wondering:  with hive heavy with bees, if one scraped off all the swarm cells and then added an extra deep or split the hive to provide more room for the girls, would/could the hive still swarm??
dave

Blair Christian <blair.christian AT gmail.com> writes:
Hi David,

I have helped out a friend with her hive this year- there have been a
total of 4 swarms from it, with the end result being about 2 lbs of
bees in each swarm (But there probably weren't more than 8 lbs of bees
in the original hive.  Swarm 1 was caught and weighed 6+ lbs; swarm 3
was caught and weighed 4.4 lbs; swarms 2 and 4 got away).

This all got me thinking about the biology.  I did some googling, and
it seems not uncommon for afterswarms to have multiple virgin queens-
as a way to hedge their bets against losing a queen on a mating flight
or for another afterswarm?

My hypothesis is that there's a gene related to swarming behavior and
multiple queens/swarm.

Both swarms were put into deeps with 1 frame of open or mixed brood.

Swarm dates:
3/15 (swarm 1, 6+ lbs, did not see queen)
3/17 +2 days (swarm 2 from swarm 1, gone)
3/28 +21 days (swarm 3 from swarm 1, 4.4 lbs - had mated queen)
4/8   +11 days  (swarm 4 from swarm 3, gone)
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