Need some advice on what to do about requeening

[tom]

Ok

  Here we go three weeks ago my big hive swarmed and i caught them and hived them well two days later it threw another swarm. OK i went in the destroyed all the remaining cells but i have forgotten a couple any way i introduce a new queen and found her dead a few days later after it rained ok day before yesterday it threw another swarm now this hive has not had a laying queen since the first swarm left ok every swarm that came from it half of the bees returned back keeping the hive full. So i went in again no eggs no sign of a queen and then i found two capped cells now it seems every time this hvae has a virgin queen and she goes to mate they swarm with her but the workers come back except for a few. Should i kill the rest of the queens and then get a new onw or just let them raise thier own but how to stop them from going with her on her flights i have no other hives that can spare young brood.

Tom

[pdmattox]

I would cut any remaining queen cells and wait 3 days and check again, if no cells are there then install your queen cage.  If there were queen cells cut them out wait till next day and then put in your queen.  Good luck.

[TwT]

 what is the hive set-up like?

They will many times throw a prime and several after swarms. If the brood nest is congested, they will swarm. Extra room in other places will not usually fix the issue.

I would give them some time to get straight and add some frames of foundation (checker boarded) in the brood area then keep looking and see if you can find a queen, odds are this hive has a queen in the hive and if you cant find her then your new queen will be killed (wasted time and money) , you could do like Dallas says and cut out the cells as long as you find them all but the question is (is the old queen gone already or is she still in the hive getting ready to go) see a queen getting ready to swarm will stop laying eggs so she can get a little smaller so she can fly so it might take her a few weeks before she starts laying again, I would split this hive and see which split has a queen, put a new queen in the queenless split , after a week or two after they release the new queen, go to the split with the older queen, find the queen and kill her then merge the two splits together (if you dont want anymore hives) or just leave them alone and have a extra hive...

oh and the bee's will some times always follow the queen a short distance then return, dont worry with it that probably happens to most if not all hives but people never see it...

[tom]

Ok you asked what was the hive setup the first swarm left with the old queen about two weeks ago. Found the queen on the ground when they were swarming and placed her in a cage to bring the swarm lower and it worked. Ok a week after that another swarm left about half the size of the prime swarm and found the young queen in the bed of my truck so i destroyed her but the bees did not go bacck to the hive they just stayed and froze to death then last week another one left but i got them inanother hive for my next door neighbor. But before that i went in and killed all the every one i could find even found two that came out walking around on the same comb side by side  got rid of them ok i put the new queen in and they released her and then after it rained i found the new queen dead so that told me there is another one in the hive so now i have been waiting to see if she has been mated but no eggs yet and they are working like fools today and my third hive is moving thier stores to the outer rim of the frames so i guess that one has been mated and must be ready to start laying soon.


Tom

[Brian D. Bray]

Some hives will build queen cells and develop them at different times.  What results is a series of swarms that get successively smaller.  This is a hive on its way to self distruction. 
The best thing to have done after the second swarm would be to recombine the swarm and put a queen excluder between the bottom board and the brood box.  That way the queen(s) remain inside and the bees will return to the hive.  As you just learned, killing a queen from a swarm does not mean the bees will automatically cause the bees to return to the hive.  It would have been prudent to hive them long enough to recombine them.