Swarmy year?

[Jon]

I just read on beekeeping forum a post claiming that this is the smarmiest year in memory.
That's not my experience for 2012 as only 4 out of about 16-18 colonies of mine made any swarm preparations.
Did others experience excessive swarming this year or is this something to do with keeping swarmy races of bee or poor management? Carniolans have a bad reputation for being swarmy.
I requeen a lot of my colonies every year and young queens are less likely to swarm, so they say anyway.
There seem to be a lot of posts which go along the lines of...I got my brand new nuc from Cheesybee and then it swarmed 3 weeks later.

[gavin]

I got some of my bees from someone who got their bees from someone who bought queens from Cheesybee but the swarmy colonies included other stocks too. For me it was such a swarmy year that I was seriously doubting my beekeeping abilities (quite rightly I suspect). I could have been better at giving them early space and one or two were my mistake for sure. This year they were swarming after the split from the queen-right halves (flying bees, one frame brood, old queen, no Q cells) within a couple of days (as the next round of Q cells were just starting off). New queens trying to swarm too.

Murray was reporting similar swarmy behaviour especially in one apiary up the hill from the association apiary. Swarms setting off with hardly a queen cell started, colonies decamping, established queens heading off and returning to neighbouring colonies. He said that its been 20 years since he saw that sort of behaviour.

I had only one colony continue through the year on last year's queen with hardly an attempt to go and it was the one I was expecting to give me trouble early on in the year. This one was the strongest early on and continued to outperform the others through the season. It also looks more Carnie-like than the others. It filled most of the Apideas for the association apiary and a couple at my apiary, it provided a nuc, donated many frames of stores to other nucs through the season and filled a super. At the moment it is one of the two strongest ones on the heather and has part-filled a cut comb super there. This colony was run as a Demaree much of the season which probably explains its lack of swarming. It did make a couple of queen cells in the bottom box at one stage but didn't try again after they were removed.

[Neils]

From my own bees it's not been anything particularly unusual. We've collected a fair few this year but I've put that down to the weather as much as anything making it difficult for people to keep on top of inspections.

[Jon]

Some people I know here were losing swarms from early April but for years there has been a tradition of sharing around swarms to start off beginners and I think that in part this swarminess is genetic. The Galtee stock does not seem to be too swarmy.
I have been encouraging all and sundry to requeen with grafted queens from apideas or at least an introduced queen cell from better stock.
An example that sticks in my mind is a relative beginner given a prime swarm which swarmed again 27 days after being housed, ie, lasted just over one brood cycle.

Murray's stock is Carniolan isn't it?

[nemphlar]

Messed mine about so much this year stripping out frames and early requeening expanding only seen the one hive trying it can't think the conditions his year supported a lot of swarming. Maybe over feeding for build up duing he bad weather

[Neils]

In terms of dates none of mine were preparing to swarm until well into May.

[gavin]

There is some swarmy stock around but the bees I mentioned were Murray's local mongrels rather than Carniolans. His Carniolans are NZ imports and as far as I can tell they seem no swarmier than local stocks. Cheesy was importing queens and stocks from wherever he could get them, and I think that many of them were poorly bred stock.

[fatshark]

Only a couple of mine swarmed and I caught both of them. Of course, one of them was a Ben Harden cell raiser :( Overall I'd say it was less swarmy than previous years but you had to be ready to deal with them in the few warm spells in April/May/June (well, ok, the warm day in April/May/June :rolleyes:).

I built a Horsley board last winter and singularly failed to get it to work despite using it to separate a really strong colony on a double brood box. They made no cells in the top box and I ended up uniting them and getting a good yield of honey from the colony.

One or two colonies made half-hearted attempts at raising QC's later in the season but wouldn't persist if you knocked them back.

I've tried to requeen my swarms with grafted queens of known stock ... I've also been donating queens to others who lose swarms and end up queenless (which, with the mating conditions we've had this year, often also end up hopeless if the remaining colony doesn't raise a queen that can get out in a weather window).

It's been a good year - though not for honey - I've learned a lot :)

[Rosie]

The odd thing I found this year was that early swarms all absconded after hiving, then suddenly they started to stay put. I caught 2 swarms for beginners but they both abandoned the hive we put them into despite using the ramp method which, in the past, has never failed me. Then I lost and caught a swarm of my own. I hived that with a frame of brood just to make them stay but they still pushed off. Others around here found the same thing and were turning to the bottom queen excluder trick to force them to stay but suddenly it stopped happening and they started to stay in the hive without the need of any tricks at all.

Steve

[Jon]

I had nothing early on and the first one to produce a queen cell was one at the association apiary in mid June.
This may have been a supersedure attempt but I did an artificial swarm on it as I wanted to demonstrate that to the group.
I introduced a grafted queen cell to the queenless part after removing a couple of cells and it emerged but they made more of their own queen cells and it swarmed about a fortnight after the split. One of the group members collected the swarm.
The other three waited until mid July and two of them had virgin queens when I got back after 3 weeks away. My queens are all clipped.
I could have lost a swarm with a virgin from one or two of these as there were a couple of cells from which queens had emerged.
The other one was queenless with what looked like a supersedure cell with a dead queen in it.

I had some absconding from apideas but that goes with the territory.

[GRIZZLY]

Much less swarmy than last year and despite the weather all my colonies are queen right.No honey tho' - the bees just living hand to mouth.I've been feeding so all the colonies are strong and should winter o.k.