There MUST be a favourite way

[Cindi]

Now that I have caught your attention, I need some help here, smiling.  For some strange reason, I haven't been as observant of looking after my bees as I usually am in prior years. My bad.  Perhaps it is the millions of babies that are hatching in the chickenyard, between incubation in the bator and Muscovy ducks, I've been having too much fun in that yard, forgot the bee yard, smiling.

 I have one colony -- remember I lost eight?  I checked the colony about 10 days ago, no swarm cells, yet.....I reversed the hive bodies (two deeps) and set that body of brood in all stages into the bottom position.  Some say to not bother to reverse, I bothered.  By now that top body should be pretty much getting full of brood.  I may be too late to prevent the swarm, time will tell that tale, and that is today, hee, hee.

Our main flow is starting in about 2 weeks, that is the blackberry, it is about a month behind, again, as it was last year.  Oh bother.

So, what is the preferred method.  I know that I will very likely come across swarm cells.  This is my day to look at the bees.  Good if I don't, but I am pretty sure.....

Don't mess around.  One way or the other, I need immediate opinions.

Take the queen and most of the brood and honey and put into a new box, making that artificial swarm.

Taking the queen swarm cells and making a nuc or two.

In any event, I am not buying queens this year, had such terrible results with purchased queens.  I will let the bees make their own queen.  I am not in any hurry to increase the colonies, yet....maybe next year.

So, bring your thoughts to me, let me make a choice of what I hear.  What would you do if you found one frame with queen cells on it, two frames with queen cells on it, elaborate please.

I will check for responses to my post later on this morning, before I head out to the bees.  That would be about 10:00 Pacific Standard time, 1:00 Eastern.....smiling.  Yep, yep, I can be rather demanding when the need arises, smiling...and today is my day for demands, hee, hee.  Ya'll have that wonderful day, to love and live, have the most wonderful health too, Cindi

[JP]

Seeing as you only have one hive, if brood in both boxes, make up a few nucs, drawing resources from the one hive Cindi, let the parent hive build and then maybe split them later on when you can afford to or let them grow and be your main and probably only real producer this year you'll have.

In a nutshell, I would make nucs from your one hive, it may be costly to split them now.

Keep that hive strong, make nucs and if they build to the point where they start producing swarm cells, you could do your split then and make even more nucs at that point.

Grow 'em up Cindi!


...JP

[annette]

I am curious about what you will find and if they have actually made swarm cells.  But you asked a specific question about what would you do if........

My answer is upon finding the swarm cells, I would do a split asap.

Also I am curious about why you do not think reversing hive bodies is good to do.  I do this every spring when I find the brood up above and nothing down below.

Let us know what you find today

Love
Annette

[mherndon]

I reversed hive bodies as well and had great results.  No swarms, and the hive was busting with bees.  I made a 50/50 split later and they made two queens.  Not sure what happened to the old queen, but if they did swarm, I couldn't tell by the number of bees.  Both hives are filling supers and I had to start with foundation on all honey supers. (first year)  I also started a nuc and introduced a Pervis queen.  They seem to be doing well, as good as the nuc I bought last Spring to get started.  I will end up with three hives and a lot more flexibility from here on out.  I plan on extracting in a few weeks to get ready for sourwood.  I also split the nuc after adding a couple of swarm calls into them and helped a friend get his hive started.  His hive has a good start as well.

Mark
 

[Michael Bush]

If you find swarm cells, I would split.  Of course I would have tried to avoid that.

If I do a split IF I can easily find the old queen, I put her in the new location.  If I don't, I just make sure both halves have at least one queen cell.  More is fine.  If I want more queens, I make more splits with each frame that has a queen.