Working Hives in Spring

[Ben Framed]

Today I checked my other yard and the boxes were packed with bees, cap brood, eggs and larva mostly on the top boxes. I was glad to see this. As expected the bottom bottom boxes wasn't quite the same, being less occupied. In spring, how often do y'all usually check for swarm cells? What works good for you and your schedule as far as checking for swarm cells?

Phillip Hall

[cao]

If you check them once a week you would catch them at some point in building the cells.  With that being said I don't have the time to go through every hive every week.  After the first couple of checks I get an idea on which ones I need to check more often.  Those are the ones that are checked more often.  Some may go a couple of weeks or more between checks.

[van from Arkansas]

Mr. Ben: count the frames of bees for general idea.  From your post, I would say 10 frames, I.e. top box full.  When 80 percent capacity and spring, the queen will swarm any day, 60 percent capacity, there is much less chance of swarming.  If the hive is full of honey, the queen has no place to lay, flow is strong THEN even at 60 percent capacity, I would watch closely for swarming..... got to run, bee meeting.

Van

[Ben Framed]

Mr. Ben: count the frames of bees for general idea.  From your post, I would say 10 frames, I.e. top box full.  When 80 percent capacity and spring, the queen will swarm any day, 60 percent capacity, there is much less chance of swarming.  If the hive is full of honey, the queen has no place to lay, flow is strong THEN even at 60 percent capacity, I would watch closely for swarming..... got to run, bee meeting.

Van

That's right Van. The top boxes were packed on most of the 10 framers. I did not find any swarm cells. (Relief) Maybe because of the mostly empty space in the 10 framers below, or it is still early even though I did find an oddball swarm in my storage stack a few days ago. I was concerned before I went into these, that swarm cells were probably running ramped and my bees were going to swarm anyday. lol
I was glad to see that was not the case.

What I did may not be correct, kosher, or text book. I will describe my (hopeful) solution. Being I had so much unused comb in the bottom boxes, (yes there were some bees but not much of anything else, I flipped the set up side down  by placing the full boxes on bottom.

I first thought of checkerboarding, however, being concerned of the possibility of an upcoming, unpredicted cold spell, I went a different route. I pulled five of the empty frames from the middle of the now top box. (before I re-set on the now bottom box). I replaced this empty space with 5 busting at the seams frames full of what we want. On the now bottom box I scooted the five full frames in the exact position of the middle of that box, matching the top box frame for frame. This left each box with five on top and five on the bottom evenly matched just as they would be in a two five frame nuc set up.

 I am hoping that the fully drawn out empty combs, may act as a liner or insulator if you will, in the case of another bitter cold spell, yet the bees have plenty of room to expand if the queen desires to lay on the inside on any four liner comb frames which border the brood frames, plus all the other empty comb surrounding all the way to the outer walls. We will see if this experiment will work out. I have never heard of doing this, (there may be a good reason I have never heard of anyone doing this 😊) , it just hit me as what was needed to be done. Before making this decision, I first thought of simply placing the empty box on top without interference, but again, the thought of the possibility of an upcoming cold snap, and knowing heat rises, I decided different. Bottom line is hopefully they will be both cozy and stay home. We will see.  Let me add, I made sure Ms Queen was started out in the bottoms of these arrangements.

Phillip Hall




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