Swarm control

[snimmo243]

This is just a bit of a thought that might be way out there, but here goes anyway!
The New maqs strips reportedly check the queen's laying for a while, if this treatment was timed correctly could it have a secondary effect of preventing/delaying the swarming urge by temporarily stopping the brood box from becoming overcrowded?
Steven

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[Rosie]

I think it's best to find ways of keeping the bees in expansion mode. Plenty of space space is only part of the story. If they stall, as they did in 2012 when the weather suddenly turned awful, they could swarm while the colony is still small.

[fatshark]

Interesting thought snimmo243 … however, isn't another possibility that the colony decides that there's something wrong with the queen and starts to make emergency QC's and prepare to swarm? I know this doesn't happen late in the season when Apiguard (usually) stops the queen laying, but the entire colony is contracting by then.

[snimmo243]

As I said it was just a thought that popped into my head at work

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[Rosie]

Keep 'em coming snimmo. Eventually you will come up with a pearl.:)

[fatshark]

OK, here's a related thought ... not for swarm control (but the threads on here tend to drift off topic).

Like MAQS, Apiguard tends to stop the queen laying. Not always, but perhaps as 'usually' as things can be defined in beekeeping. The usual time to use Apiguard is after the honey harvest and before it gets too cold to be effective i.e. early autumn. This is a critical time for the colony as it's when the queen is laying eggs that will eventually become the overwintering bees. I like my colonies to go into the winter strong and resent this break in brood rearing.

Last year I stupidly forgot to record which colonies shut down laying during the month of treatment (I tend to give them a tray of Apiguard, 12kg of fondant and then I go on holiday!). What I do see this Spring is that some are raring to go and other are still on only 2-3 frames. I now wonder whether the weak ones were the ones that stopped laying :confused:

So, two questions ...

1) Has anyone observed if there is a correlation between a break in egg laying caused by Apiguard and weaker colonies in the spring?
2) Is the break in egg laying is genetic ... do some queens always stop laying, whereas other always keep going?

I jokingly suggested to Max Watkins of Vita that he should sell a strain of queens that are unaffected by Apiguard ...

[Adam]

FWIW here's my answer...

1) I treat all colonies with Apiguard so can't comment myself. I think the brood break (if it occurs) and varroa treatment is better than not treating.
2) Behaviour with apiguard is variable from hive to hive so there must be some genetic content to the reaction. Some ignore it, some remove it, some try to bury it in propolis.

It's not uncommon for there to be a natural brood break in late summer as the brood nest contracts so we could be seeing a natural break at the same time as Apiguard goes on so we're not sure of the reason.