Outside have access to candy. Attendants in cage.

We'll see what happens.

I forgot to ask if they were marked? It would be good if they were so that you could identify them easily. As I stated earlier, I don't usually remove cups/ cells until I have replacement mated queens in hand. A few days off and wild or rogue cells could hatch around the same time as mated queens are released and unless your mated queens are marked, you will have no idea which Queen is running around the hive.

Marked and clipped

Yep. New page!

Clipped? you mean, wings??
never heard of that.

It's supposed to help prevent absconding/swarming.  I'm in the "I don't care about money, experiment and learn" phase.

Having them clipped will not prevent swarming, it will only slow the process down. I am not a big advocate of clipping wings but my queen breeder friend does it. He clips the right wing for even years and left wing for odd years. He has been doing this for a long time. I asked him why the other day and he said because the marking paint comes off of the queens so he can determine age by looking at the clipped wings. Makes sense especially if you requeen a lot.

One thing I noticed when I opened my hive: in the places where they'd covered cracks and holes with propolis, it had melted, automatically providing some air flow!

Not necessarily ground breaking but I have switched up my management practices to try some new things.
I did reverse brood boxes on "some" of  my production colonies but before I did, I added honey supers and did not reverse until after the dandelion flow. This was to keep from getting chilled brood which can be a big problem especially up here in the spring. I also am managing a few single deep brood box colonies this year. One of them has three supers on it right now. One of my friends manages all singles so I took his advice and tried a few. So far, they are producing a lot of honey. Unfortunately, one of them swarmed as with this management style you are using Excluders and if the bees store honey in the brood nest, the queen runs out of room to lay fairly quickly. Part of his management is having bees that have a low tendency to swarm. He runs all Danish Buckfast queens and can have an incredibly populous colonies without swarming. I have 10 of these queens coming on July 10th but figured I would try in the interim with an Italian (swarmed twice) and a Carni/ Italian mutt from my own stock. As far as checker boarding or manipulating frames as opposed to reversing boxes, who wants to move boxes around? I find it easier to manipulate frames and get the same results! Part of the reason behind me not having to reverse is that I am splitting hives so much. At one point I made it so that I had an abundance of queens available so I was splitting on average about 4:1. After that, you are eliminating the upper brood box for a while so I didn't have to reverse. As to swarming, I let a few of my very strong drone colonies swarm. The reason behind this is that they are very strong (lots of drones) so swarming gives them a brood break. These are set up with lots of drone comb for mating and become "Mite Bombs" after a while.
Besides all of that, my cell builder hive swarmed last week. It was right after the second round of grafts where developed into cells. I think that I made it too strong and after thy completed the cells, bye bye! It is difficult to manage them because you want them working on both the emergency superceedure as well as swarm impulse. If you set-them up too strong, you run the risk of them taking off. I usually try and pack about 12-15 frames worth of bees into the top (queenless) box so that they have an abundance of bees to start working the cells. After two days you are uniting them with the Queenright colony below with the Cloake board and together they complete the cells as one big Queenright colony. I set up another cell builder the beginning of last week and yet another one today as I am hosting an open hive meeting with my friend (queen breeder) and doing some demonstrations on different methods of queen rearing. He is doing a presentation on Thursday for our club and a follow up on Saturday here at my house. By mid July I will probably have 50 or so extra queens

BTW: this is my favorite Breeder Queen. She pumps out frames of eggs/ brood faster than any other. The bees bred from her are so doscile I have been working them without gloves. I will be making a lot more queens from her....
And here is my second fav. Her paint is coming off

Me too.

Come on up! I will even cook for you
My wife takes excellent notes so I will scan them and post them for you. Sometime after next weekend.

Thank You.

Party at CE's place this weekend!

It's probably too late, but I have a tendency to ask for advice after I do something.  

I did a hive inspection yesterday, and one of my hives had 4 or 5 queen cells in the top box that had larva in them and would have been capped before I went back in.  Today I went back in, grabbed the queen and a frame of brood, added a frame of honey and two empty frames, and stuck them in a nuc.   I shook a frame or two into the nuc with the queen and buttoned it up.  I have no idea how many bees stayed.   I assumed the girls were getting ready to take a trip, so I beat them to it.

Dumb?  Next step?

That's basically what I did. Except in a 10 frame box.  The queen excluder went underneath. (Thanks to whoever here mentioned that idea recently)

Took excluders out after two days. Today at the 8 day mark I found both queens, no queen cells, and plenty of eggs, with lots of new comb going up.  

Whether or not the queen excluder helped or not I don't know.  I doubt it hurt. The hives had pollen and nectar coming in.

I'll update on the original hives and the queen intro success on Wednesday when I open them at the 7 day mark from adding the queens.

No.  My nuc doesn't have room for an excluder.  I could try to put one over the front of the hole, if that would help.  Might be too late already if she has plans to move.  I moved them three hours ago.   I could transfer them to a deep tomorrow if you think that's better.  I just thought a NUC would be smaller so they'd stay put.   I guess worse case scenario she'll bail with the few bees I left her with, right?

I agree with putting them into 10 frame equipment ASAP. A healthy/ prolific Queen can quickly outgrow a 5 frame Nuc box. If you have an extra queen excluder. You could cut up a piece to fit over the entrance of the hive in place of an entrance reducer. I would also add a frame of brood if you have not already. As to swarming, if they have it in their heads to go, sometimes no matter what we do won't stop that. You can also get secondary and tertiary after swarms with hatched Virgins. I had this discussion with a two friends of mine. One is a commercial beekeeper and one is a certified Master Beekeeper. We had a lenghty discussion about the dynamics of swarming and what happens when they do. It is now believed by some (me included) that virgins that emerge will only kill developing queens of roughly the same age leaving to develop other virgins which leads to secondary/ tertiary after swarms. I "think" that sometimes a virgin will hatch and a bunch of bees that have acclimated to her pheromone actually push her around the hive protecting her, hiding her from other Virgins. If this is true (not yet proven), they would leave with that Virgin leaving behind another virgin with the bees. These would all be daughter queens which have been known to co-exist in the same colony. This is especially true of Mother/ daughter queens. I have had a few hives with more than one queen in it at the same time. It is also true that Virgin queens can sometimes squeeze through a queen excluder. Since that is true, it may also be possible for a mated queen that has been preparing to swarm can also fit through. I am unsure of that but can ask. One more thing now that I have read through your post, close up your screened bottom board when putting swarms into your equipment. I don't know why but many have complained about captured swarms absconding because of the screened bottom boards. If it were me, I would close it up for a few weeks.

Update on my emergency swarm prevention splits.

Two new hives with original queens:  

Both queens present and laying, two new frames built with comb in each, 8 frames total.  No queen cells in sight.

Removed excluders from bottom board, added second deep.

Original two hives:

Introduced two queens last Wednesday morning after 3 days queenless.  One hive has queen present today. Gentle but active, no queen cells.

Other hive, no queen or eggs after checking 20 frames.  Bees everywhere. A few frames of older capped brood. Lots of honey. Tons of capped swarm and supercedure cells.  Packed to the gills with bees.  Very loud and mean enough to put gloves on.

This last hive now leaves me in a bind.  Do I order another queen and try again? Should I let them raise one?  If they have been queenless 10 days, and I raise a new one will the hive be at risk for failure this winter?  

If I choose to buy a new queen should I wait a few more days and make sure I'm not blind?

Overall, I don't feel like I'm in to big of a bind for a newb. I can always combine this hive with others as a last resort and take my losses in the summer.

I would let them make their own for now!

That's my thought.  This hive is loaded with honey, and without a queen, they are sticking nectar everywhere.  It's already so strong of a hive, with good stores, that a population dip doesn't seem like the end of the world.  Mites should be well behind the curve, too, with basically no capped brood by the time the new queen starts laying?  

Should i start feeding them to keep stores up?

I'm kind of shocked by how strong these hives got two months after being packages.  My biggest unexpected event so far in the beekeeping journey.

I moved her from the NUC to a 10 frame deep today.  She'd already started laying in the NUC and it looked like they'd enticed some bees from the original hive over.  I added an excluder to the bottom board.

I didn't check the other hive.  I'll probably check it tomorrow to make sure the queen cells are capped, then leave it alone for a week to see if I have a laying queen.

If you notice capped cells and you don't plan on harvesting them for other splits, I wouldn't check back for at least two weeks.

That depends on what the flow is like in your area and if you have honey supers on.

I have a massive swarm right now.  They are high enough I need to hook the branch with a rake to shake it.  The bark is very rough, and about 10-15% of the bees stay in it. The rest are all over a hive and canvas cloth.  

Do I need to remove every bee from the branch or will they eventually enter the hive?

The hive has some drawn comb in it already from a friends package that absconded after install. (Emergency acquisition! lol)

This swarm issued from the "queenless" hive. Whoops!

They can stop making new comb, for one thing. Isn't that how they regulate laying?

I'm betting on my own incompetence at this point with regards to queenlessness.  They have come off the branch. Not matching right into the hive, but some bees are entering.

Will bees swarm that big without a queen? I thought the queen was a necessary item.

The bees are mostly entering the hive, slowly.  There appears to be a bunch of fighting going on, and some dead bees on the cloth.

Normal or wtf?