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AugustC Silver Bee

Joined: 08 Jul 2013 Posts: 613 Location: Malton, North Yorkshire
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Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 10:31 am Post subject: Cast swarm timing |
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I still cannot get my head around the timings for cast swarms can someone help me.
In early June I had two hives:
Hive 1 swarmed on the 11th June - This was definitely a prime swarm.
Assuming they left the day the first queen cell was capped, the queen emerged 8 days later ie saturday 20th. The last possible queen (from old queen eggs) could be ??? upto 10 days later ie tue 30th June.
I collected what was obviously a cast swarm on saturday 27th June, if we assume the swarm left the day before it is likely they came for hive 1???
I have not been aware of a prime swarm from hive 2 (but that means nothing but on checking on sat 27th there did appear to be reduced bee numbers.
What do we think?
a) Late cast from hive 1 (15 days after prime)
b) Cast from hive 2 having missed prime. |
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Adam Rose Silver Bee
Joined: 09 Oct 2011 Posts: 589 Location: Manchester, UK
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Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 12:49 pm Post subject: |
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My guess is (b). I often miss the prime and only notice the reduction in numbers after one or more casts.
Barbara and I both noticed "early casts" a few weeks ago, in other words the gap between prime and first cast was less than 8 days. We surmise that this was because the prime swarms were delayed a couple of days by the bad weather at the time. In other words, we were actually seeing late primes, not early casts. |
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Barbara Site Admin
Joined: 27 Jul 2011 Posts: 1857 Location: England/Co.Durham/Ebchester
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Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 4:17 pm Post subject: |
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I've voted for it being from Hive 2 as well. Of course we can never be sure but if you are seeing numbers depleted at hive 2 then it's more likely you missed the prime and maybe even another cast. It's stretching it for it to be from hive 1 after that length of time but not totally impossible.
My first hive swarmed 22May (prime), 26th May (1st cast) 29th May(2nd cast) and 2nd June (3rd cast- which has developed a drone layer but thankfully I think I have a spare queen to sort it).
My other hive that swarmed, I missed the prime and the casts kept coming out and going back just when I thought I had them captured and I failed to catch any in the end but they gave me a good run around!
3 biggest colonies still haven't swarmed, which is really, really strange! |
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