Swarmed

[Jordan McCain]

Hi! Second year with bees - and they just swarmed. I haven’t encountered this looking for advice on next steps. They didn’t go far, I caught them. How do I know the queen is for sure with them? Should I get them a new hive? Do I need to Requeen my old hive? There are still bees and brood. I wasn’t inspecting as often this year… they have food, honey, space to lay they seemed to be happy aside from a lot of what I thought was bearding on hot days. Thank you for any help!


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[Charlie Garrott]

Jordan:

If the bees stay in your swarm catch hive, they likely have a queen. If they don't have a queen and you put in a couple frames with capped brood, larvae, and eggs, they will attempt to make a queen by making queen cells. You should inspect the captured hive in 3 days to see if you have eggs. If you do, there is a queen. If you don't, no queen. You can buy and put in a queen.

You should inspect the hive that swarmed in 4 days. If the queen left, you will likely find multiple capped queen cells indicating they are making a new queen.

Let us know what you find on inspections and we might be able to help you.

Others will be smarter than me on this topic! Good luck.

Charlie Garrott

On Tue, Jun 30, 2026 at 8:13 PM Jordan McCain <jordan...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi! Second year with bees - and they just swarmed. I haven’t encountered this looking for advice on next steps. They didn’t go far, I caught them. How do I know the queen is for sure with them? Should I get them a new hive? Do I need to Requeen my old hive? There are still bees and brood. I wasn’t inspecting as often this year… they have food, honey, space to lay they seemed to be happy aside from a lot of what I thought was bearding on hot days. Thank you for any help!


Sent from my iPhone

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