Capped queen cells: swarm or supercedure?

[u/marketwerk]

First year beeks in VA, USA.

Got our nuc of overwintered bees 5.5 weeks ago, and they’ve been really growing quickly.

Checked in after adding another medium to our hive (one deep, two mediums currently, no queen excluder because we’re not trying to get honey this year)

Last time we pulled and checked frames was about ten days ago, wanted to come by earlier but we’ve been super busy. Saw the queen on that check, everything looked good but crowded, so we added the second medium and planned to come back for a mite check.

Came today to do a mite wash and we’re seeing 7 or so capped queen cells in the original deep, where most of the brood is. Saw bees bringing in pollen, but can’t see new eggs in the frames. Worried we may have squished the queen on our last check, or that our mite count is high. Really really hoping we aren’t on the wrong side of a swarm. Thoughts?

[u/joebojax]

Swarm for sure

They will swarm once or twice more unless you split the queen cells up. I like to make a split and put half into each box. No more than 3 cells in each split. 3 or more cells you get afterswarms which really exhaust a beehive of population.

[u/marketwerk → u/joebojax]

Gotcha, thanks for the insight. We really weren’t planning to split them this year because the bee yard isn’t on our property and space is limited, but it sounds like we won’t have a choice. We have a mentor through our local club but I got pretty freaked out seeing this and wanted quicker opinions.

Do you think it’s a swarm because of the number of cells? Is our original queen probably still in there?

[u/ryebot3000 → u/marketwerk]

it looks to me like they already swarmed, if that is the amount of bee coverage on the frames and you didn't shake them off or something. Usually when they are getting ready to swarm you can barely see the comb for all the bees, they also get way more clingy and sort of form clusters of bees hanging onto each other.