Late season swarming

[alancooper]

My bees are "local" (blackish) to Fermanagh and possibly related to local Irish Midland bees (where historically I think Carniolan bees were common). If swarming does occur it happens late in the season (once in early September but normally in August). I do not seem to be troubled with early season swarming (late June-July). My query (as a beekeeper of 6-7 years) is whether late swarming is a feature of bee "type" (ie., genetics) or bee management (eg., slow build-up in the Spring/early Summer) .

[Jon]

Where did you hear that Carniolan bees were common in the midlands?
From reading some of bee forums such as beekeeping forum Carnica seems to be a very swarmy subspecies.
Late swarming seems to be rare in NI. I don't think I have ever had bees try and swarm later than the end of July.
Curiously I had none of mine swarm this year out of about 20 colonies. Taking bees to fill apideas every now and again probably helped.

[alancooper]

Where did you hear that Carniolan bees were common in the midlands?
From reading some of bee forums such as beekeeping forum Carnica seems to be a very swarmy subspecies.
Late swarming seems to be rare in NI. I don't think I have ever had bees try and swarm later than the end of July.
Curiously I had none of mine swarm this year out of about 20 colonies. Taking bees to fill apideas every now and again probably helped.

I heard it from a Leitrim Buckfast beekeeper five or six years ago - so it is unsubstantiated. The facts are that I got my first bees from a Fermanagh source, supplemented them with bees from the Midlands beekeepers association, and have also added to them with bees from Fermanagh. They are usually well-behaved/productive and for the past few years I have been selecting for traits by breeding from my "best" queens.

Maybe my late swarming is related more to bee management and other conditions than to their type. I hope the thread on this continues.

[nemphlar]

You may be on to something, as a 2nd year beginner I bought a queen from thornes, nothing would stop her laying and on a visit to the heather I found 2 massive swarms hanging conveniently from a beech tree, mid August. Since sticking with locals I'd be very surprised to find a swarm past mid July. To be fair at the time with no protection I was able to snap the conveniently thin branch and drop them back in the super, they were very quiet

[wee willy]

Swarming at the heather is a well know phenomenon !
Remember, to take advantage of the short foraging season ,colonies need to be BIG , Therefore it becomes a matter of balance difficult to be accurately called!
VM


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[Jon]

There is a guy in Leitrim imports a lot of Buckfast queens and packages from Germany but I don't think he works with Carnica.
The same chap has an anti native bee agenda.
Have a look at his website!!!

http://www.irishbeekeeping4you.info/html/mellifera.html

As an aside, the Spanish part is riddled with spelling mistakes. I stopped counting at 10.

There was a guy quite local to you, a joiner, Eric Edwards from Caledon, importing Carnica queens a few years back. Not sure if he still does.

Wing morphometry will actually distinguish very well between pure Carnica and pure Amm as the wing venation pattern is quite different between the two.
If you have been improving local mongrels the morphometry would probably give you an idea as to whether your bees are more Carnica than native although that is more speculative than distinguishing between pure races.

The Galtee stock is very good as it has been intensively selected for well over 20 years. Redmond Williams uses II to keep selected breeder lines going.
If you contact Aoife Nic Giolla Coda she could fill you in on the charactistics of the bees.
It is a bit of a myth that Amm makes a frugal and tiny colony as a lot of the Galtee stock makes a big powerful colony. The queen I got last years heads a double brood box colony and is a prolific layer.

Re the bees is the midlands, John Summerville from Tollamore is one of the best known queen breeders in Ireland and he is a dyed in the wool native bee man.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Alan
Reading the old beekeeping books there are many references to late swarming as a characteristic of bees from heather areas
Makes sense really that they reserve swarming for when there is flow
When those bees were relocated to a mixed flora location they tend to carry on with the late swarming
So I would say you are right it might be a characteristic of some strains inherited from parent stock

[Bridget]

Had a call yesterday there was a swarm of honey bees about 15 miles from here - in this terrible weather. I thought they stayed put in the pouring rain. Don't know whether they were black or what bees as I declined. Thought they would be a gonna or gone by the time I got there and didn't fancy it in the rain. However, my blackish bees from a neighbours swarm earlier in the year were flying today, in the rain.

[alancooper]

Jon,
Our Q rearing group is happily converted to the benefits of native AMM and we have just finished restocking with native AMM - from Jon Summerville.

[Jon]

You will have good queens if you got them from John.

[Bumble]

I've got a question or three, looking towards next year.

What would be the advantages of buying a native queen, or two, in an area full of mongrels where their descendants will probably mate with carniolan or buckfast drones? Would I need to keep buying in? Does anybody know if the native black's, or any type of bee's, genes are dominant?

I've realised this is probably in the wrong thread, sorry.

[Feckless Drone]

I've got a question or three, looking towards next year.

What would be the advantages ?.

Think of the satisfaction you would get as your native-type drones serviced those carnie and buckfast Qs.

[alancooper]

Bumble,
Also off the topic, but - my aim is (as far as is practical) to keep bees adapted to our local environment and to maintain good behaviour and productivity - buying good local queens helps (it brings in local genetic diversity) - as does requeening with the best bees from within my own hives.

The thread answers to my question on late swarming have been interesting to me - looking forward to more.
Alan.

[alancooper]

Feckless Drone,
What a great reply - it says so much, so concisely.
Alan.

[Little_John]

I've got a question or three, looking towards next year.

What would be the advantages of buying a native queen, or two, in an area full of mongrels where their descendants will probably mate with carniolan or buckfast drones? Would I need to keep buying in? Does anybody know if the native black's, or any type of bee's, genes are dominant?

I've realised this is probably in the wrong thread, sorry.

Yeah ... but never mind. Maybe whoever has the appropriate powers could cut these posts out and stick 'em in the 'AMM thread' ? 'Cause (imo) this is a very valid concern.

I think one of Jon's answers a while back provides a good solution. Which was (in my words):
to buy an AMM queen in year one, and let her offspring mate with whatever drones are around. Queens from those matings will then provide your AMM drones for year two.
Then, in year two, if grafts (or whatever method you engage in) are taken from a second AMM queen of an unrelated genetic line, then those virgins will go on to mate with the drones from the first AMM queen - and after that, you're up and running ...

Ok - so there's still undoubtedly going to be some genetic 'contamination' from other breeds, so a fresh AMM queen from a controlled mating setup may well be required from time to time - but that's only one new queen per apiary, and maybe only needed every five or six years or so.

Sounds like a bl##dy good plan to me (which is why I'm currently engaged in doing precisely that myself, right now).

LJ

[Adam]

But won't the AMM be outnumbered by all the rest?

[The Drone Ranger]

Think that would be the case in most areas because drones are regularily tracked 15 miles or more from their home hive.
Any queen you buy will eventually disappear and a daughter mated by local drones takes over.
Might as well be AMM though if you can get one

[Jon]

But won't the AMM be outnumbered by all the rest?

In many areas that's the case but if you have a queen rearing group and you get most local beekeepers on board you should get good results.

[Jon]

Think that would be the case in most areas because drones are regularily tracked 15 miles or more from their home hive.
Any queen you buy will eventually disappear and a daughter mated by local drones takes over.
Might as well be AMM though if you can get one

A drone can fly 15 miles but that is not a regular occurrence. I imagine most head to a local congregation area within a mile or two.
A lot of my queens mate over the apiary itself so I assume they are mating with the drones from within my own apiaries. I have seen this happen at 4 different apiary sites.

[The Drone Ranger]

A drone can fly 15 miles but that is not a regular occurrence. I imagine most head to a local congregation area within a mile or two.
A lot of my queens mate over the apiary itself so I assume they are mating with the drones from within my own apiaries. I have seen this happen at 4 different apiary sites.

Hi Jon
I have 34 hives on the smallholding at the moment so probably have a fair proportion of the very local drone pool
Drones have great wing power and make hops between hives I think they are always welcome so they get around
Could AVM be either to do with location or might it be a trait in some bees
I guess you might have more ideas on that than me
Queens leaving mating nucs take their flights earlier and might have less wing power so mate closer to home ?

[brothermoo]

Re: late swarming it seems to me the weather is tje main factor as it dictates the flows... management would be next on the list, genetics prob has even less to do with it again.
This is just from my small experience :)

[busybeephilip]

Drones will go into any hive - yesterday evening I dumped a load of drones that had never flown (deliberately trapped above an excluder) , they flew around making lots of noise searching for a home for at least ten mins and went into any hive they could find. They seemed to be able to sniff out the entrances.

Jon, a 15 mile radius means that my drones and the minnowburn drones are well within reach, infact from Comber to the far side of Belfast and vice versa. This means that Belfast and district should be well satuarated in the Galtee strain drones given the numbers of BDBKA with minnowburn Q's. Also Amy (Killinchy) up the road from me who has pure extreamly quiet galtee kittens means that my virgins should be meeting the correct lads.

My observation hive containg a 110 Q is giving 100% dark bees while one of the other 110 queens is giving a mixture of about 5% yellow, probably met a bloke from south Down. So far the rest of the open mated are all giving dark bees but it will take a season to determine how good they are for temper and honey. I've requeened some 30 hives so far so I'm hoping that they build up in spring and give a good crop of early season honey.

I also observed the AVM thing but there was no drones involved in the small swarm, just workers aimlessly flying in a circle in front of the apideas, during this time workers would be fanning on the apidea, when the queen returned so did the workers again fanning in front of the apidea. I'm wondering is it a way for the bees to spread scent in the area of the apidea to help guide the return of the queen since the survival of the colony relies on her successful return?

[Jon]

Queens leaving mating nucs take their flights earlier and might have less wing power so mate closer to home ?

Mostly I have seen it from apideas but one time it was the queen from a supersedure cell in a full colony which mated over the apiary.
At first I thought that by coincidence my apiary must be below a drone congregation area but it seems to occur in all the apiaries I visit on a regular basis.
With 34 hives I imagines your drones are dominating the area unless you have a bee farmer on your doorstep.

[Jon]

Jon, a 15 mile radius means that my drones and the minnowburn drones are well within reach, infact from Comber to the far side of Belfast and vice versa. This means that Belfast and district should be well satuarated in the Galtee strain drones given the numbers of BDBKA with minnowburn Q's. Also Amy (Killinchy) up the road from me who has pure extreamly quiet galtee kittens means that my virgins should be meeting the correct lads.

It is a percentages game and you will get the odd duff one - either for temper of for chalkbrood.
Any queen I graft from has likely mated with 12-15 drones so you could have a frame of grafted larvae with that number of half sisters. Some will make better queens than others.

This year I have seen a lot of improvement with very few yellow banded bees.
I would be curious to know if there are still yellow bees at Newforge which is too close for comfort.
They were supposed to be moved away but I never had that confirmed.
I picked up this queen in a swarm in a bait hive in the garden mid May so someone in the area must have a Buckfast type bee.

2123 2124 2125

[The Drone Ranger]

I think in the rape season the surrounding fields will have lots of hives dwarfing my numbers :)

[Little_John]

But won't the AMM be outnumbered by all the rest?

Well, it's a numbers game, isn't it ? So - say you reared 10 or more queens in year 1, and then raised those colonies on foundationless combs ... you'd then have a helluva lot of drones in the air, compared with those beekeepers who use embossed foundation and remove drone comb on every inspection, or those who deliberately install drone comb and then remove it as an anti-varroa measure.

An awful lot of beekeepers remove drones from their hives at every available opportunity, in order to maximise honey production.

You could also try using the 'moonlight mating' aka Joe Horner method to restrict mating to late afternoon - supposed to be good for achieving >80% desirable matings.

LJ

[busybeephilip]

I take it you marked and clipped her, it looks very like buckfast, I'd say the source would be within a mile of your house. There are a few one hive beekeepers that are unknown to the Beekeeping Club.

By the way, I purchased one of these twist and turn marking cages instead of using the tube plunger type - they are very good. (Maisemore stock them at about £8)

[prakel]

This might be a good point to mention (again!) that Dr Gudrun Koeniger will be at the National Honey Show talking on the subject of mating strategies to avoid in-breeding, in the past she's studied the business of preferential in-race mating.

[The Drone Ranger]

This year I have seen a lot more yellow bums in my hives
These are from the 2014 queens so I don't know why that would be
Still last year I got 3 queens all from bee keeping friends
One friend had 3 of Jon's queens and I "borrowed" one
That has been exceptionally good
The other two I got were nice black and gentle as well
So the plan for 2015 queens is moving to a mix of daughters of those 3 plus daughters of the best of my own using Snelgrove boards

As the oil seed rape ended swarm preparations started on those hives not already split and meant me taking out a nuc with Queen and leaving a single cell in the hive
So then it was wait till the new queen gets mated, no need to interfere just write the likely laying date on and inspect then
This year though several new queens mated then just laid up 2 frames or so and took off leaving a bunch of queen cells
Is that something other people have seen or is it just my bees that need a talking to ?

I just revived this thread rather than starting a new one

[Adam]

I think your bees need a stiff talking to!

Odd things do seem to happen one year and not the next - I had one particular year with chalkbrood. Another where queen balling was observed - neither before or since - and one where queens disappeared or just stopped laying. And one year where two queens fainted - to recover.

Hopefully yours will behave next time around.

[alancooper]

I started this thread last year - and thought that an update was needed.

I came through the winter with no losses and strong, low varroa hives (an oxalic acid vapour treatment in Jan may have coincided with a period of few sealed brood). With plenty of hazel and willow pollen in the rural hedges I fed steadily through to April with fondant (longer than usual). By mid May, hives were 5-7 frames sealed brood and bursting with bees. June was spent controlling swarming and gaining arm/back strengthening through lifting heavy supers during inspections. As of this week swarming activity seems to have stopped (fingers crossed). Weekly/fortnightly Varroa counts since Feb have given (from five hives) just an occasional mite dropping from a mesh floor.

What do I conclude? - that my bees are not a late-swarming strain - and that hives with strong local (blackish) genetically heterogeneous bees, well fed for a spring build-up and with low varroa numbers do well and swarm at the normal time of year. I seem to remember my beginners class tutor telling me something similar.

Why the change over previous years? - I guess another year of beek experience has made the difference.

Are there other reasons for the change? - as with all anecdotal stuff, I might just have been lucky in a good spring/earl summer.

[alancooper]

Oooops.... My start thread (Feb 2014)was:

"My bees are "local" (blackish) to Fermanagh and possibly related to local Irish Midland bees (where historically I think Carniolan bees were common). If swarming does occur it happens late in the season (once in early September but normally in August). I do not seem to be troubled with early season swarming (late June-July). My query (as a beekeeper of 6-7 years) is whether late swarming is a feature of bee "type" (ie., genetics) or bee management (eg., slow build-up in the Spring/early Summer) .
Alan

[gavin]

Oooops.... My start thread (Feb 2014)was:

"My bees are "local" (blackish) to Fermanagh and possibly related to local Irish Midland bees (where historically I think Carniolan bees were common). If swarming does occur it happens late in the season (once in early September but normally in August). I do not seem to be troubled with early season swarming (late June-July). My query (as a beekeeper of 6-7 years) is whether late swarming is a feature of bee "type" (ie., genetics) or bee management (eg., slow build-up in the Spring/early Summer) .
Alan

Or both!

Around here (lush mixed arable lowland Eastern Scotland) 'early' (or normal) swarming is in May and June (sometimes April). I thought that I'd got through the season with some colonies not yet attempting to swarm but now I find some of that late season swarming appearing. Well, I'd call it late. I artificially swarmed two colonies at the association apiary today .... and Jon warned me that his colonies often try it in July. I have two of his queens heading full colonies in one apiary of my own and they certainly seem reluctant to swarm early. There is some local native genetics at the association apiary. In contrast Murray said recently that he abandons swarm control and changes the focus of his maintenance around 15th June.

I suspect that I've delayed swarming more than usual this year by the appropriate application of space. In previous years the work-life-beekeeping balance has been a bit wobbly and spring colonies been tight for space.

G.

[The Drone Ranger]

Gavin
are you seeing more yellow /tan abdomens on your bees ?
Not the breeding station ones
The ones down in your own apiaries

[The Drone Ranger]

I think your bees need a stiff talking to!

Odd things do seem to happen one year and not the next - I had one particular year with chalkbrood. Another where queen balling was observed - neither before or since - and one where queens disappeared or just stopped laying. And one year where two queens fainted - to recover.

Hopefully yours will behave next time around.

Hi Adam
I had a queen play possum on me once
I thought "That's torn it she's died" as I watched her drop back into the hive
Closed up - next day she was marching around normally
Had a chalk issue one year
2005 the disappearing queen problem
I Have only ever seen queen balling a couple of times though
I hope my queen replacement plan doesn't take me from the frying pan to the fire :)

[gavin]

I hope my queen replacement plan doesn't take me from the frying pan to the fire :)

In my experience it often does, one way or another :).

[gavin]

Gavin
are you seeing more yellow /tan abdomens on your bees ?
Not the breeding station ones
The ones down in your own apiaries

Yes I am. No progeny to speak of at the association apiary yet but at my site in the central Carse of Gowrie, despite flooding the apiary with darkish drones, the first queens produced 25% to 50% stripey progeny. Someone nearby has a lot of high-maintenance non-native stock.

[Calluna4u]

[QUOTE=gavin;307In contrast Murray said recently that he abandons swarm control and changes the focus of his maintenance around 15th June.
[/QUOTE]

Not as simple as that Gavin. Its a strategy to produce maximum bee peak for the first half of August. We start a rolling run of giving the queen unlimited space around then, but it takes the rest of the month to complete with the numbers involved. Adding a second deep to anything with brood in 7 bars or more, removal of the excluders and giving the queen a free run has the side effect of removing swarm pressure. It does NOT kill it off completely as a few are just going tobe naturally swarmy anyway. Not enough to make swarm control a viable activity however. Have had the largest number of later swarms arriving at home base (thus not our own as no bees nearby) for many years. 18 and counting, and the last two could not be contained in a single deep box, either Smith or Langstroth. Thus this is year in which many not using a swarm ending strategy will need to be vigilant.

We are on our last run round now in the run in to the main migration (starts tomorrow and runs for two and a half weeks) and are now seeing most parent hives at 10 to 18 bars of brood, and growing, which bodes very well for the heather. About one per site is still messing about with cells (so 3 to 5%). The splits are now mostly up on to doubles now as well, so almost 90% of ours will be headed for the moors as doubles or triples. Its the laying space that makes the heather bees, and coincidentally stops most of the swarming.

Which brings you back to the idea of swarmy and non swarmy bees. Much of swarming is beekeeper caused. Lack of brood space, lack of storage space, lack of attention. Congestion is top trigger. Avoid that and you will find that many so called swarmy bees are a lot less so.

Heather swarming often has other triggers however. Rough handling, bumpy tracks, large colonies, confined spaces. Emergency cells due to loss of the queen in migration for whatever reason are not at all uncommon, and a large colony WILL throw a swarm or two when they hatch. More common though is the same old chestnut. Lack of attentiveness in adding extra space. The old fashioned way of cramping bees to force them to produce comb honey, especially on starter strips or sections, gives rise to very high levels of heather swarming.

None of this is a bee type debate. These thing apply pretty well across the board.

[The Drone Ranger]

Or both!

Around here (lush mixed arable lowland Eastern Scotland) 'early' (or normal) swarming is in May and June (sometimes April). I thought that I'd got through the season with some colonies not yet attempting to swarm but now I find some of that late season swarming appearing. Well, I'd call it late. I artificially swarmed two colonies at the association apiary today .... and Jon warned me that his colonies often try it in July. I have two of his queens heading full colonies in one apiary of my own and they certainly seem reluctant to swarm early. There is some local native genetics at the association apiary. In contrast Murray said recently that he abandons swarm control and changes the focus of his maintenance around 15th June.

I suspect that I've delayed swarming more than usual this year by the appropriate application of space. In previous years the work-life-beekeeping balance has been a bit wobbly and spring colonies been tight for space.

G.

Hi Gavin
I have one of Jon's as well and they started more slowly than most of my others but have made a pretty big strong colony now
My own hybrid/Bitsa's are bigger early which is needed for the rape so by the end of May its peak for swarming season
I would bank on Jon's for the heather though with a lot less work on the swarm control front in May/June
They were overwintered so that's the first season I wonder what they will do next year
Calluna's post was interesting to see how a big operation can plan to minimise swarming
If you can keep the same basic stock you can predict when you need to have things done ie swarm boards etc
You can see by the difference in the way Jon's queens lay, that the bees you have alter the way they need to be managed
I wasn't sure if it was normal or just this one queen (which I borrowed for research purposes lol! from WJ )
I would recommend Jon's queens to any beekeeper and especially folk new to the hobby

I thought I had a fair lot of drones as well but yellow bums are back in numbers
I don't mind, but it's a puzzle because the bees have been going in the opposite direction for a few seasons
You have to get that Bee Breeding station working flat out :)

[fatshark]

Well … it's official, they're still swarming in Warwickshire. I rearranged a big* pile of unused supers and broods last night in preparation for moving house and a swarm moved in this afternoon. Of the various stacks they chose the one with a finger-width crack (which I missed in the gloaming when moving them) and are now distributed in a shoulder height pile of boxes, some of which have frames in.

2334

The b*ggers totally ignored the poly bait hive that was nearby :rolleyes:

* 'big' relative to the small-scale amateur beekeeper, rather than calluna4u's definition of a 'big' pile of boxes which is about the size of the Cairngorms.

[The Drone Ranger]

could have been worse though Fatshark they might have gone down the chimney

[fatshark]

Hmmm, not so sure … chimney isn't half-filled with drone brood supers. I'm hoping to have cleared these down into a brood box by late Sunday. However, if there's a laying queen in the top somewhere it could prove challenging. Also … I'm not taking the chimney with me when I move.

Re. the original topic, the blackberry are coming on strong here now and colonies that had QC's a week ago sen to be now mainly focussing on collecting nectar rather than making swarm preparations.

[Calluna4u]

Not finding many cells ourselves, but gee its still going strong. TWO massive swarms arrived at home base this weekend, well one massive ( two deeps full of bees ) and the other almost a full Langstroth deep. That makes six large swarms, at home base alone, in the last week, and by now if should have eased off. Free gift of someone else's heather crop.

[Calluna4u]

The b*ggers totally ignored the poly bait hive that was nearby :rolleye

Thats highly likely. We only leave wooden bait hives, as for some reason they seem to be greatly preferred by swarms. Poly bait hives have a fairly poor record of taking in swarms so we leave wooden ones instead (when available...not many this year as now no vacancies worth talking about).

[fatshark]

That's not my experience … I've got the majority of swarms over the last 2-3 years in poly bait hives. Partly this reflects the fact that I've got some poor poly Nationals (MB) I'd rather not use on a daily basis, so I use them as bait hives. Even two poly supers with a correx floor and lid work fine. I don't doubt that cedar boxes end up being more 'bee smelly' but have no qualms about using poly hives. This year and last my first and biggest swarms all chose poly.

Re. my earlier post #42 … the swarm was a prime and the queen had laid up much of a drawn super frame. However, this was on drone brood foundation and the bees reengineered the majority of the cells to worker size for the queen to lay in. Neat.

[Calluna4u]

Lol....thats one of the beauties of doing bees......so many differences. One of our Scottish bee farmers has had a health crisis in the last few weeks and we went to helpout with some of his bees......and he too was all poly bait hives, stacked between boards as you state, even double or triple story bait hives.

Our own use of bait hives has declined sharply since the 2009 EFB outbreak, and most apiaries no longer have any bait hives. At home base we do not normally keep any bees and the swarms we get there are incomers to spare gear in the yard, and they rarely choose the poly. You may have a point about the smellyness, as most of the wooden hives are considerably older than any of the poly ones.