Artificial swarm variants

[gavin]

So, you got your bees last year, you got them through the winter, they are exploding in this fine spring, and then the queen cells start. What now? Hope that they go away?! Cut them out in a panic? Get on the internet to order a new queen as obviously this old one wasn't doing her job right? No, someone said artificial swarm.

OK, there are different flavours of artificial swarm. The first question is ... where is the old queen going (assuming that you can find her, and if not seek help). Some say take the old queen out in a nuc box with a few frames. That isn't my advice because you will then have a populous and queenless colony. Two results:

- the flying bees are now queenless and likely to be tetchy and troublesome
- new virgin queens will take an age to come into lay as they usually do in a populous colony

Here is what I said in an email to a year 2 beekeeper the other day:

1) new box on the old site

2) frame with the queen goes into this having removed any queen cells on that frame

3) if you have any empty comb to spare, put at least one in (the flying bees will need somewhere to dump their goodies, and otherwise you might still get more queen cells because they've no space). Otherwise foundation.

4a) reduce the queen cells to one in the old box (shake bees off but not the frame with the Q cell to be kept - shaking is risky - to make sure you miss none), OR

4b) reduce Q cells to two, leaving still open cells. Leave a week. Move the box to the other side of the original hive if you can. Flying bees join the old queen, box gets depleted, the bees will allow only one queen and she will not swarm due to the depletion, OR

4c) Split the old box into two boxes (or more) with one queen cell in each. Insurance against a failure of mating or hatching.

I tend to do 4c but the others are good too. If 4b then leave only open cells to guard against losing a cast with a virgin, and to make sure that there is a good grub inside the cells.

Doing the artificial swarm this way round ensures that the flying bees (the ones that could cause trouble) are queen-right and so well-tempered. The queenless part has few flying bees.

Also, there could be a risk that either part might starve in poor weather. Leave them honey stores, or feed, particularly if poor weather is forecast.

Any comments folks?

Gavin

[Jon]

I have done all of those variants at one point or the other.

A lot of people have reported that the queen still swarms after having carried out the artificial swarm.
To prevent that you can put a queen excluder under the brood box. Check if they have started queen cells again after a few days and if all seems fine and dandy, remove the excluder.


Some say take the old queen out in a nuc box with a few frames.
- new virgin queens will take an age to come into lay as they usually do in a populous colony

That is one of the reasons I like Apideas as the queen usually is laying 11 or 12 days after hatching.
Trying to deal with a double brood box queenless colony is one of the biggest nightmares in beekeeping.
I find a big colony is ok as long as it has a queen cell but if the virgin queen gets lost on a mating flight you then have a queenless monster to deal with.
Definitely not a task for a beginner.

For those who cannot find the queen, you can put a new box on the original site and set in a frame with a single good queen cell.
Shaking in a few younger bees is a good idea as well but you have to be careful not to accidently shake in the queen.
You then have a queen cell with all the flyers and the queen and the brood in the other box with no flyers so she cannot leave in a swarm.

The other factor is clipping queens.
I clipped queens for the first time this year after hearing too many horror stories about swarms escaping to chimneys (see blog)
If you clip the queen and continue to do weekly inspections you have insurance against missing a queen cell.
Missing a queen cell in a populous colony is very easy.

[Calum]

A big colony that wants to swarm is difficult to stop unless the queen is removed (move the whole colony leaving a brood box with one open frame of brood and the supers on top).
The swarm will usually only be delayed by removing bees and brood.

But I if you have the choice breeding from your best colony is really easy.
Put 5-6 frames of mostly closed brood (+ attending bees) in a brood box shake in 3-4 frames of (queen free) bees.
Move to another site. After 1 week remove queencells and add 10 very young larve (in plastic starter cups is easier for caging later) from your fravorite colony.
The bees have no choice but to raise these to queens.
After 4-5 days you can put on the hair curlers and prepare artificial swarms (in apideas or partitioned brood boxes) for the number of queens that have been raised.
Simples.

This can be repeated 2-3 times.
I got 9 then 7 and 5 = 21 queens from one breeder so far this year using this method. It cost me 6 frames of brood and some more bees+ some liquid feed.
for best results with apedias I use shook bees from the breeder that raised the queens.

[Adam]

Any queen that has been in an Apidea gets clipped and marked before leaving which generally means that you get the queen back some of the time and you get the bees if they do swarm. I sometimes can't find a queen in a big colony for a while, Jons tip is to have a nuc nearby and if the queen is seen on a frame, pop the frame in a nuc as the chances are the marking pen or scissors are not at hand just when you need them. OR you put the queen back in the hive and then find queencells later on during the inspection. Once the inspection is done the queen can go back in on her frame. No need to put her in a matchbox or anything like that as some books say.

If I really need to find the queen and can't I seive the bees by shaking into a box under a queen excluder and a few hours later the bees will have moved up to the brood above the Q/Ex leaving the queen below. If there is one frame of brood below, she will (should) be on there and then the top brood box can be lifted off to do an A/S if desired.


I cut down to 1 open queencell rather than two if I don't use queencells elsewhere. That's on the assumption that there isn't a curled up queencell I've missed between the bottom of the comb and the frame bottom bars.

[Kate Atchley]

Horsley Boards

On the basis I don't have to stick too closely to the topic ... has anyone recent experience of Horsley boards? Have made two and hope to try them out on my two largest colonies ... to use the top brood box as queen-cell rearers, possibly in two batches.

Have read the bumf but practical experience always beats the theory.

Kate

[Adam]

Kate,
the fact that you haven't had an answer probably means no. It's a no from me too.
Dave Cushman's web site has an interesting practice of using the board to give 2 queens in the colony:-

http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/horsleyalt.html. Which would be interesting to try.

[The Drone Ranger]

Can't help on the horsley board although Beecraft did have an article by Michael Badger on the subject a while back.
I use Snelgrove boards every year that gets you a new queen and a strong honey gathering colony in the same way.
Well done on making the Horsley boards by the way :)
On the SBA website there is an article on how to make a Snelgrove board if you are interested

[gavin]

Very clear instructions lower down on the page here:

http://www.scottishbeekeepers.org.uk/downloads/html/downloadsindex.html

Written by a man somewhere N of Dundee ...

[The Drone Ranger]

LOL you got me Gavin

Going back to Kate's original request though I would say that only someone using a Horsley board in your area and with similar bees will be much help.
I am in oil seed rape land, it all happens right at the beginning of the season, so I need an early split and swarm control for about a 4 week window using the board, after that its back to checking for queen cells and splits
I have tried Ian Craig's overwinter on double box with 16 frames then add foundation that gave about a two week delay to swarming and queen cells which is not enough for me to get the crop in.
If it was me I would dive straight in and see how I got on.
You need to use these boards before queen cells are started but there also needs to be a good nectar flow.
The big + is new queen and strong colony all at once combined with very little disturbance during honey gathering

[Jon]

I think the two key aspects of swarm prevention are 1. don't start with swarmy stock and 2. make sure the brood chamber is never clogged up with stores so the queen has unlimited space to lay. This is particularly important in April as many beekeepers seem to feed too much in early spring. I've seen brood chambers with 8 frames of capped stores and 3 frames left for the queen to lay. I actually saw a double brood colony a few years ago with about 16 frames of capped stores and the guy was still feeding syrup in May. The top box had 11 frames of capped syrup.
The other thing which works well is demaree where the brood is lifted to the upper box above the Queen excluder and she is always left with empty drawn comb in the bottom box. My queenright queen raiser colonies are the strongest I have and they rarely make queen cells other than from the grafts they are offered. The arrangement for queenright queenrearing is basically a demaree system.

Clipping is also good insurance.

[gavin]

Ha! Then you are the kind gentleman who donated stock to the Claverhouse Group last year. I should be grateful that your stock has a tendency to be swarmy as Forida and Wendy in their first year had more swarms and casts than boxes to receive them, so I made good some of my losses from the 2009-10 winter with bees ultimately from you. They are noticeably more swarmy than bees I've had before.

I should get my head around the Snelgrove system sometime (Forida did try to teach me - it was lovely to see the tutee become the teacher) but for now I have enough to learn about Apideas and grafting. We were given a donation of two Smith Snelgrove boards by Marsh Croall for the association apiary so we'll probably have a go with them next year.

The Amm-looking stock we bought recently was in double brood boxes and made it into June with no queen cells. That's my kind of bee! One of the pair didn't mind being inspected in the rain. I'm not sure about the early season build-up yet - we'll see that next year.

Gavin

[Adam]

For queenright queenraising I use as Jon - what is in essence the Demaree method.

I tried the Demaree method this year as swarm control on one hive and it didn't really work. A week after the demaree I cut out the queencells from the top brood chamber. In the lower chamber the clipped queen was not laying. She continued to not lay until all the brood had emerged (with the exception of a few drones). She went into a mini-nuc and started to lay straight away so there was nothigng wrong with her. So I put in a queen and they trashed her. I knew there was no other queen present but I put in a test frame anyway and queencells were produced to confirm queenlessness. Then another queen went in. Plastic tab over the candy. 2 days later the tab was removed. 5 or so days after that the queen was laying and there were queencells being produced - sort of in a hurry. Long ones on the comb but with no larvae in them - not just a queen cup. A few days after that the queencells were full of RJ and larvae so they were removed just beforre sealing. Maybe they will accept the queen now as she was still laying (as of last week). I'll check again. This WAS a double brood colony doing so well too.

Was the demaree the problem? Probably not; I had another colony early this year where the queen stopped laying for no apparent reason. They've now got a swarmy Carnolian queen in there to build up fast.

[The Drone Ranger]

Horsley Boards

On the basis I don't have to stick too closely to the topic ... has anyone recent experience of Horsley boards? Have made two and hope to try them out on my two largest colonies ... to use the top brood box as queen-cell rearers, possibly in two batches.

Have read the bumf but practical experience always beats the theory.

Kate

Michael Badger's BeeCraft article is on this link courtesy of The Beekeeping forum.co.uk
http://idlebeekeepers.co.uk/upload%20files%20here/horsley%20board.pdf