Your Method of Swarm Control

[Jimbo]

As the bees in my area are about to start producing queen cells. What is you preferred method of swarm control. My favourite is to use a split board that has 3 doors.

[Rosie]

It depends on the strength of the colony and who it belongs to. The usual methods I use are a Pagden but with the queen in the new position with the brood, or the nuc box method whereby I steel the queen and put her with a couple of frames of brood and plenty of nurses. When helping beginners with their bees I use Pagden and then arrange to inspect again a week later to sort out the new lot of queen cells that often appear in the original position.

Rosie

[gavin]

Good timing - my colonies have started making queen cells this week.


My favourite is to use a split board that has 3 doors.

Me too. I use that for colonies I wish to breed from, or strong colonies having previously introduced a frame of eggs to use to raise the queen cells. There are pictures in my blog from almost exactly a year ago:

http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/entry.php?144-Doing-the-splits

and a link in there to a fuller deswcription in this thread:

http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?85-Lazy-man-queen-rearing

cheers

G.

[Jon]

I have discovered that the queen rearing process helps a lot with swarm control.
I always pick the strongest colonies as cell raisers and keep moving the brood up to the top box every 10 days or so, replacing the brood with drawn comb in the bottom box.
This is effectively a demaree system and it means that the queen never gets short of space to lay in.
With luck you can get through a summer without the colony making any swarm preparations.
If the colony makes cells in the bottom box, I stop using it as a cell raiser and do one of the variants of an artificial swarm.

And I clip all my queens as well.

[Neils]

I've tended to use Pagden (Variations) for my AS if I'm not actively trying to do anything else or increase further. I'm starting to run out of space so was going to try our simplified Snelgrove method on some hives this year.

For once I'm well prepared, I have far more hives set up and ready to go than colonies that are likely to try and swarm.

[lindsay s]

I like to keep things simple. Once my colonies start making queen cells I remove two or three frames of brood and one of stores, which I put in a nuc box. I also shake in some extra bees for good measure. The nucs are then moved to a friend’s apiary and left to get on with it. I still check the main colonies once a week and remove any queen cells. Last year I made some of my nucs to strong and they went into overdrive, they produced lots of extra queen cells and swarmed. This year I will check the nucs after six days and remove any excess queen cells. I have even bumped off queens in the main colonies and introduced a frame with a queen cell from another colony. I mark my queens but I’m to cack-handed to clip them.