Apols for the late kickoff,
Life, ya noe...like.
A shout for our USA brethren on their holiday - mind how you go with the
fireworks, no 999 calls hey, hopefully!
My input relys on the two posts linked to below.
https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=49624.msg470646#msg470646https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=49624.msg470688#msg470688I'll preface the work with the concession not all will own the conditions
or maybe the philosophy to undertake an alternative to the swarm
management they have in place. The important element of b'kpn is
SM is practised.
In facilitating an income our Vietnamse brother is removing brood
to sell, keeping the bees to make more brood to sell - effectively a
perpetual source of supply _and_ in real terms, a broodbreak.
He cannot afford to have bees swarm nor service more storage than
is required to raise brood so he keeps the colony to a single box
packed to the rafters with bees, relying on attrition through age and
the rebuilding of brood to maintain those numbers in a volume of
space they usually would vacate - moreso being Cerana, a known
swarmy strain. So where such works with them the same concept will
work with other swarmy or not so swarmy strains.
And it does - as was practiced in our pollination operation, back when.
I am not going to layout our method here, primarily because it is our
"intellectual property" and so commercial in confidence - these things
have a habit of turning up in tomes or weBlogs, only produced to make
make money and often not even edited by a beekeeper.
What I will provide is the theoretical concept which then may allow
others to develop steps either through discussion or trial.
The beekeeper needs to recognise and know each of the four 'phases' of ecological process for Apis - Establishment/Survival/Expansion/Reproduction. Reproduction requires a swarm with a mated queen to replicate themselves in establishing a new colony away from the parent - so for the managed colony this phase has to be avoided, maintaining the colony in Expansion mode.
For any particular local anywhere on the Planet the b'keep knows the timing for each phase and so manages around them, basic stuff.
Yet pay attention and the bees will tell you when they are switching from Expansion to Reproduction, or are at least thinking about it.
One biological signal is enthusiastic drone laying at the extents of the broodnest - frames #2/#7/#8 of a 9/10 broodchamber (BC). That fixation
alone provides brief worker broodbreak, and is noticeable as eggs in the central broodnest wane with cells of emerged brood cleaned but not used increasing in numbers.
For Expansion we (Man) do not usually desire any deviation of the queen from worker brood lay so as soon as the bees begin to think Reproduction is on we change their mind in reconfigging the broodnest, effectively what our Vietnamese brother is up to.
Yet many a teaching says to wait for serviced queen cups set to morph into queen cells (QC) to appear before doing anything. Biologicly this is way too late as the swarm urge is well installed, so even with cell/cup removal AND frame manipulation AND extra space they may STILL continue building QCs. All the while not focussed on production, more keen
in building what is needed to ping off. The key then is not to let them get beyond thinking about it, to keep right on Expanding, seeing a need to Expand.
We do this by introducing a broodbreak. Confining the queen to a set area of cells bees still recognise she is present but not able to be coerced to lay across frames. There exist a number of options in "how to"(confine), individual choice applies. As uncapped brood grows and is capped with bees emerging creating 'aged' nurse bees leaving excessive empty broodconb, the queen on release is herded into laying up those cells again... and so it goes on until conditions deny swarming alltogether.
Compare that outcome to making "on the fly" suppositions in moving frames/boxes around only to find on next inspection a 'lazy' hive loaded with cups/QCs.
Now as flows begin there are masses of bees at foraging age, not lost to a swarm, well ready to fill supers then provided.
Sure, the numbers built may well 'frighten' many a b'keep owning images of all bees in the box at all times, frames (empty) ready to be drawn/filled.
But not even close to the 'fright' of going to the yard to see your bees hanging off a limb 40feet in the air, or worse, opening a box only to find a cluster of bees hanging off one frame, looking lost and forlorn, figuratively speaking.
This got way long, out of hand.
Discuss?
Bill