Handy chart showing the relationship between the development time for new queens, swarming and hive population.
The important thing to remember about queen development is it can take about a month from an egg in a queen cell till that egg turns into a mated laying adult queen. I have personally seen new queens laying in the range of 25-32 days from queen egg being laid. Others say 28 days plus or minus five days.
During that time:
- Population will decrease due to the swarming bees leaving
- Then population will increase for three weeks as existing brood emerges
- Then population will decrease for three weeks as brood from the new queen develops into adults.See the pdf version of the chart below.
