Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: Snakey on August 20, 2012, 06:29:45 pm
-
I mean is there any way around it? I'll go through my hives every two weeks if it must be done but they propolize the frames pretty hard and I don't want to bother them any more than I absolutely have to. I have some colonies that are young, installed this past April, and when I peeked inside recently the one hive was full of swarm cells. It has been raining for three days but when weather permits I'll try to figure out if they have already swarmed and I'll take some measures to prevent multiple swarms. If they have not already swarmed I plan to split them. We have mild winters and I'll make sure they don't starve.
So anyway...what do I need to expect in the future, like next spring? Do I have to really spend that much time preventing swarms, or can I try to make it nice and roomy in those hives and then take a few weeks off?
-
If you have a crowded hive and queen cells,move the old queen along with a couple frames of bees and brood into an empty hive.This will relieve the urge to swarm somewhat and lessen the chances of ending up queen less. Which is what will happen if you remove all queen cells and your hive swarms anyways.
A healthy colony wants to swarm,that is there goal from day one,as this is how bees propogate their species.
-
Michael Bush has a great deal written on his site about swarm prevention. You might want to take a look. The two methods he mentions - which both seem to work - are "opening the brood nest" and "checkerboarding". I have not been able to find much written about checkerboarding. At least there are no step by step instructions that I was able to find anywhere.
-
I try to give them room to grow. If the swarm, they swarm. I put out traps and by mid march try to watch the trees for them.
-
George Imrie also has quite en extensive online library about this and many other topics:
http://pinkpages.chrisbacherconsulting.com/Alphabetical_index.html (http://pinkpages.chrisbacherconsulting.com/Alphabetical_index.html)
-
Check out the stickied topics in the reprint article section?
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/board,56.0.html (http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/board,56.0.html)
-
Thanks everyone. The checkerboarding method makes sense. I'll keep it in mind and try to keep my hives sufficiently "checkerboarded" and see what happens. What was said about separating the queen with some frames is exactly what I was thinking of doing, if she's still around. I think every rainy day that goes by is making them more ornery, even more so if it is frustrating their swarming efforts, and I'm scared that they will be mad as hell when I go in there to deal with them!
-
the other thing is...if you keep knocking off those queen cells and they swarm anyway, you have left your hive queenless. better to deal with it another way. in a really big hive, in addition to moving the queen, you can take queen cells and make an additional nuc. you don't want to overly weaken your big hive, but a couple of splits off a big one will insure that you don't lose everything. best done on a mature hive early in the year when the impulse to swarm is strong. extra hives, extra queens....
-
Michael Bush has a great deal written on his site about swarm prevention. You might want to take a look. The two methods he mentions - which both seem to work - are "opening the brood nest" and "checkerboarding". I have not been able to find much written about checkerboarding. At least there are no step by step instructions that I was able to find anywhere.
"opening the brood nest" Is in the brood nests
"checkerboarding" is in the honey supers
BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)
-
I have done what Micheal Bush recommends on opening up the brood hive with empty frames twice this season and they take care of things on their own. No swarm and booming healthy hive. The queen cells just disappear one their own.
-
Opening up the brood nest per Michael Bush's instructions have kept my hives from swarming. It has worked all these years, except this year when the hives built up really fast and early and I wasn't on top of it all. We had a mild winter and I never realized the bees were building up so early.
But placing empty frames in between frames of brood like this: Brood, Brood, Empty, Brood, Brood, Empty has worked for me. This is all on Michael Bush's website.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm)
Good Luck
Annette
-
What do you do with the frames you take out? Put another box on top with those frames in it along with empty frames?
-
Michael Bush has a great deal written on his site about swarm prevention. You might want to take a look. The two methods he mentions - which both seem to work - are "opening the brood nest" and "checkerboarding". I have not been able to find much written about checkerboarding. At least there are no step by step instructions that I was able to find anywhere.
Walt Wright the guy who came up with the checkerboarding idea sells a manuscript for about $11 that explains checkerboarding. You can do a google searce on Walt Wright and find his address. The information in the manuscript is worth the reading weather or not you do the checkerboarding.
-
Michael Bush has a great deal written on his site about swarm prevention. You might want to take a look. The two methods he mentions - which both seem to work - are "opening the brood nest" and "checkerboarding". I have not been able to find much written about checkerboarding. At least there are no step by step instructions that I was able to find anywhere.
"opening the brood nest" Is in the brood nests
"checkerboarding" is in the honey supers
BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)
Fat Bee man checkerboards the brood box. That makes more sense.
Checkerboarding BeeHive Fat Bee Man (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XABXPyQ2rg#ws)
...DOUG
KD4MOJ
-
Great video. Thanks. The Fat Bee Man is awesome. Thing to remember is that for every full frame in the bottom box, there must be an empty frame above it. That's where the "checker-boarding" comes from.
-
What do you do with the frames you take out? Put another box on top with those frames in it along with empty frames?
Yes that's the idea, or you could use them in a split. After the brood grows up they should fill the frames with honey if they are above a queen excluder.
Guess what, it's rainy and cloudy again, so I still can't go into my hives. :-x
-
The end result of removing queen cells is a queenless hive. And that is discounting the effort and time involved. It is most certainly not worth the effort in my experience.
-
Snakey, where are you in MD? I'm in Frederick co and our flow seems to be done and my queens have slowed to a near standstill.
I have plenty of room in all my boxes and I still have them refusing to stay inside. It has been quite muggy so I know it must be hard for them to regulate the hive. Add that up to nothing to forage and you get lots of board bees hanging out...
-
Michael Bush has a great deal written on his site about swarm prevention. You might want to take a look. The two methods he mentions - which both seem to work - are "opening the brood nest" and "checkerboarding". I have not been able to find much written about checkerboarding. At least there are no step by step instructions that I was able to find anywhere.
"opening the brood nest" Is in the brood nests
"checkerboarding" is in the honey supers
BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesexperiment.htm (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesexperiment.htm)
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm#opening (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm#opening)
BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)