I was in hives of two different beekeepers today.
The first set of three hives were thought to be queenless after a split and two swarms. In all three cases we found eggs and young larva. Lesson to be learned: it takes a long time from the time a colony swarms until the new queen starts laying. Four weeks is a minimum. Five weeks is not unusual. Don't give up too soon. (At my place the wind is so strong in the afternoons it amazes me she can even get out to mate. I think she says to herself, "tomorrow".)
The second beekeeper had a different problem. First of all he had eight frame boxes and only two deeps. That's a guarantee that they will swarm. A colony needs three deeps for the brood and then several for honey supers depending on whether you are using deeps or mediums as supers.
One of his colonies was strong a couple of weeks ago but all it had now was about one hundred fifty bees and a queen. So there had to have been a primary swarm and several after-swarms. It's a virgin queen. So we can't cage her and put her in another colony. Even if she gets successfully mated, a queen will not lay more eggs than she has nurse bees to take care of them. (Isn't that amazing?) So the colony will never grow.
We ended up leaving the queen and her micro-colony in the bottom box. We put newspaper down and added a second deep with three frames of younger bees that were drawing out comb. The second hive had swarmed and there were no frames with eggs, larva, or capped brood to move over.
We'll have to see if the thousands of bees that will eat through the newspaper will kill the queen below. The virgin queen doesn't have the same strong pheromone of a mature mated queen.
Maybe there were more options but we couldn't think of any. Any suggestions from any of you?
Claire