A few weeks ago I tried a Demaree/vertical swarm for the first time.
Week 1: friday, checked for and removed queen cells from both top and bottom brood boxes
Week 2: Wednesday, lots of queen cells: play;open; and sealed. In both boxes. Removed them all.
Week 2: Friday, more queen cells in the top, probably empty or not viable, and no sign of eggs or queen in the bottom. Stupidly, I assumed that the sealed queen cells, apparent absence of the queen and lack of eggs meant that she had swarmed once the queen cells were sealed.
Week 3: Friday the weather was dreadful - high winds, heavy rain, very cold, general nastiness. After inspecting the other colony, which was extremely resentful of being disturbed, I decided that the vertical swarm colony didn't need checking. After all, it wasn't queen-right. Right? Wrong.
Week 4: Wednesday, an email from my partner: "Your garden is FULL of flying bees!" (I forgot to mention - this colony was hived in the prime spot and had built up well. There were lots of bees in there). What the hell had gone wrong? What had I missed?
Week 4: Friday, inspect the hive and find lots of sealed queen cells (plus some other unsealed brood). The queen had seemingly still been there, stopped laying ready to swarm then, when prevented from swarming, started laying again. The workers, still in swarm mode, turned several of these eggs into queen cells, and swarmed as soon as they were sealed.
I subsequently removed /all/ the queen cells bar one. That has now been torn down and the bees are in better temper. I'm now waiting, blue pen optimistically at the ready.
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