Early swarming

[Adam]

I have one hive that took several attempts to get a queen mated last year and then finally when they had a mated queen; attempted to supercede her 2 or 3 times - before her own bees were significant in numbers in the hive. I cut out the queen cells and they gave up supercedure in August. They have grown well this year in a 16 (!) frame National with 8 frames of brood and loads of space but have now produced several queen cells. I WAS thinking of breeding from this colony as they are the most gentle I have.

Here's the question,
Do I assume thay are a swarmy bunch and not worth breeding from or do I assume that they are infact OK and they have never liked the look of the queen for some reason and her offspring will be non-swarmy?
Opinions invited!

[gavin]

Sounds like Carniolans? Big, booming colonies, gentle when a pure stock (just wait till they cross), swarming and supercedure cells whenever you turn your back. Whatever they are, I don't think that they are suitable. You just can't have continual swarming and stay friends with your neighbours (or stay sane!).

Select from your less swarmy stock. Remove drone brood from your big one, or their genes will spread anyway. Use your big one to raise new queens by inserting frames of eggs from a couple of your better behaved colonies.

So - cut out queen cells in the swarmy one, and drone too. Add single brood frames of foundation into your better colonies. After a week you may have frames full of eggs.

Back to the swarmy one. Cut out queen cells again. Take frames of eggs, trim with a knife (cut right along 2/3 way down where there are eggs and v young larvae. Destroy 2 out of three along the cut, and splay out the walls of the third. If your swarmy one is on two brood boxes, insert a Q excluder between the two, old queen below, prepared frames of eggs above, frames of pollen with some honey around each, keep the colony congested. If it wasn't a swarmy strain I'd encourage Q cells by inserting a super or two between the brood boxes.

A week or so later make up nucs using your nice new sealed Q cells. Sorted.

[Adam]

Gavin,
My bees are a bit of an odd mixture. Last year I had 3 colonies to breed from:-
- The daughter of the hive I was given which had an unknown queen (to me). Propolis Mary.
- A colony with a queen from a local breeder (got very angry)
- A swarm I had collected the year before.
All the bees are quite dark.

So just a mish-mash of mongrels really which produced the 8 full colonies I now have (some grafted, some not). I have a mixture of temperaments of course too. I am keeping the drone brood down on the less desireable colonies as you suggest - and allowing drone brood to emerge under super frames in the desireable colonies.
I am hoping to breed a decent bee over a few years as much as I can (I know it can be a lifelong task (obsession)).


Yesterday I split a (large and swarm imminent, lots of bees) colony by putting the clipped queen below an excluder to use the brood chamber above the super as a queen raiser. To clarify I have (from bottom up) Floor, Queen in brood chamber on one frame and drawn comb,excluder,super,excluder,brood chamber with 8 frames of brood,space for feeder above,crownboard,roof.

I expect they will start to make queencells in the top brood chamber anyway so I will cut them out during the week as I don't want to breed fom this lot and I can graft then - weather dependant.

I COULD leave the set-up as described OR remove the super and bottom brood chamber with queen and put her in a nuc so the bees are suitably squashed. Once the queen cells are sealed I could put the super back to get all the honey the foragers will gather (I hope).

[Jimbo]

Hi Adam,

I agree with Gavin. If you want to breed a decent bee you are best to learn how to do morphometry on the bee wings or send a sample to someone who can do it for you. You would also need to look and see what other colonies are near to you and find out what other beekeepers are doing i.e are they importing Queens etc. You can make quick progress if you can identify an isolated mating site and if you keep good records and score you colonies on the traits you are interested in. If you check the BIBBA web site they have free downloads on a hive record card and stud book software. I started to improve my bees about 4 years ago using the BIBBA system and all my colonies are now gentle and are near native pure black bees.

Jimbo

[Adam]

Thanks Jimbo, I have seen the the BIBBA site. However I haven't done any morphometry - I still remain unconvinced about it! However I THINK I know all the beeks locally and none import as far as I know. I also have as many colonies as they do combined so I have a reasonable chance of dominating the mating. I'll let you know in 4 years!

With the phenominal growth of beekeeping, there will undoubtedly be a large (larger?) number of imports coming into the country. I think it should be stopped myself but I'm not prime minister! (Thankfully) Apart from the problem of bee behaviour with cross breeds, and imports unsuited to the climate, sooner or later a nasty disease will be brought in. It's only a matter of time. A bit like roulette. Let's keep spinning the import wheen until we get a zero and we all lose!