Does the "Shook Swarm" make sense? Discuss please

Having just read Advisory leaflet #16 I am left puzzled.

It claims that the shook colonies become the strongest but gives no evidence of the experiments that prove this assertion.

I may be being thick on this one but... Given the colony has no notifiable disease, has normal varroa and the usual nosema, what are the benefits?

All I can see is the feeding of more sugar and buying more foundation.

Sterilisation of combs used to be achieved by glacial acetic acid, has that changed and I missed it? A possibility of course.

Numerically losing all the brood from the colony to me makes no sense, it's like throwing out the baby with the bath water. How can a colony with say 6 frames of brood with potentially thousands of new workers about to hatch become stronger by losing them?

Frankly this one leaves me bemused and far from convinced.

Please note I am NOT discussing colonies with EFB. Put that argument to one side, I am talking about a normal situation.

PH

I can see how the shook swarm might work, PH.


1, no brood, so all bees able to forage
2, think they've swarmed, reducing chances of early swarming
3, nowhere for queen to lay, so bees quickly make new wax and build comb
4, very little varroa in new home, as most left in discarded brood
5, fungal spores and other possible disease bearing organisms discarded along with the comb
6, bees are known for rapid build up after swarming, so perhaps this encourages that behaviour?

(all just conjecture, as I have not performed a 'shook swarm' and added for the sake of the discussion that this thread will no doubt encourage)

Poly Hive said:

Having just read Advisory leaflet #16 I am left puzzled.

It claims that the shook colonies become the strongest but gives no evidence of the experiments that prove this assertion.

I may be being thick on this one but... Given the colony has no notifiable disease, has normal varroa and the usual nosema, what are the benefits?

All I can see is the feeding of more sugar and buying more foundation.

Sterilisation of combs used to be achieved by glacial acetic acid, has that changed and I missed it? A possibility of course.

Numerically losing all the brood from the colony to me makes no sense, it's like throwing out the baby with the bath water. How can a colony with say 6 frames of brood with potentially thousands of new workers about to hatch become stronger by losing them?

Frankly this one leaves me bemused and far from convinced.

Please note I am NOT discussing colonies with EFB. Put that argument to one side, I am talking about a normal situation.

PH

Click to expand...

I'm with you on this one PH, with the possible exception of a break from comb borne pathogens and any other benefit from fresh brood comb there seems no logical reason why a colony having undergone a shook swarm should forge ahead and overtake equivalent colonies not having endured this major disruption. No doubt a shook swarmed colony can do well, but I'm 100% convinced that barring brood disease or serious varroa infection, a colony would do far better given an extra brood box of foundation( on top of their existing one of "old" comb) and fed an equivalent quantity of syrup.
One possible explanation for the myth is that it has been spread by the inspectorate to ease acceptance of the practice of shook swarming contact colonies.

I tried it a few years ago on just two colonies that were both strong but on very old combs and DEFRA as it was then were advocating shook swarms, both colonies romped away leaving other of similar strengh in that apiary behind, they gave a larger honey yied and as tony said they made no attempt to swarm. They did have to be fed heavily to get the combs drawn and from memory I put a QX under b/box to stop them absconding, just until there was new brood to care for. Was there a big unknown viral load in the old combs, I do not now but the results were looking at me, two weeks later they were in unbeliveable shape. But with large numbers of colonies I still move the worst out to the edges and change for new as the season progresses, changing established ways are not easy. Plus the time and kit required, I am not convinced it would work equally well on all colonies in every apiary.
kev

All depends when you measure it I think. The shook swarms really do start to motor once their brood start to hatch. but in the meantime the unshook ones go into swarminess, instability, all sorts of management issues raise their heads.................and when you arrive at heather time, the shook swarms (so long as they were done not later than the end of May), are all peaking. Seen it a few times during the EFB outbreak.

Not at all sure though, that if you added up the total honey from the shook swarmed colonies, and compared it to the normally run colonies AND the splits off them, that the assertion of superiority would be borne out ( actually pretty sure it would not, as we keep a lot of statistics that at least suggest this not to be the case. I could explain how I could extract that data set from my crop returns but gee it would fry the brains.)

My own motivation was to replace quite a bit of old comb in one go. A Bailey would have been an option but a move onto 14x12 was planned so these particular bees were put onto rapid comb production duties. I'm not convinced that they come back stronger. I think the effect is more 'visual' as the comb building productivity is spectacular. Queen is in overdrive though.

Will Shook Swarm help rid colony of Chalkbrood or is it just infecting new foundation and frames with the spores?

Must say bees work flat out and produce a new environment for themselves in double quick time when they have their 'backs to the wall; so to speak.

tonybloke said:

I can see how the shook swarm might work, PH.


1, no brood, so all bees able to forage

Click to expand...

When a swarm forages 2 weeks and then it has lost 50% of bees.

To handle nectar the hive needs home workers too.
So they "all bees" do not forage and they cannot forage.

A hive needs all the time new emerged bees to carry out the handling of nectar, dry it up and cap, making wax. It is heavy workd.
If nectar comes too much and home workers are not able to do the job, foragers start to make cluster on out walls.

BBG said:

Will Shook Swarm help rid colony of Chalkbrood or is it just infecting new foundation and frames with the spore.

.

Click to expand...

No, but it looks like. When summer becomes warmer, the chalkbrood vanish itself. What ever stupid you do, it seems to affect.

Only way to get rid off chalbrood is to get genepool which is resistant to the disease. There is no chemical treatment against chalkbrood even if seller say so.

In my experience shook swarmed queens dont last as long, I wonder if that is apparent from your statistics ITLD ?

.
When a hive looses 20% of its brood, it cannot forage surpluss. All will be consumed to feed new larvae. Chalkbrood makes this.

Finman said:

.
When a hive looses 20% of its brood, it cannot forage surpluss. All will be consumed to feed new larvae. Chalkbrood makes this.

Click to expand...

OK, so would a shook swarm therefore help rid the colony of Chalkbrood, particularly if a new Queen was introduced at the time?

BBG said:

OK, so would a shook swarm therefore help rid the colony of Chalkbrood, particularly if a new Queen was introduced at the time?

Click to expand...

Absolutely no. The disease is still in the hive. Disease kills only 20% of brood and the beekeeper 100% And what was the idea! The beekeepers is so 5 times worse than any disease with his shakings.

.

mbc said:

In my experience shook swarmed queens dont last as long, I wonder if that is apparent from your statistics ITLD ?

Click to expand...

Sorry, thats not a statistic we record.......BUT..........would think that your observations in this will probably be reliable as I can see a lot of reasons for it to be so.

BBG said:

OK, so would a shook swarm therefore help rid the colony of Chalkbrood, particularly if a new Queen was introduced at the time?

Click to expand...

Two unrelated tasks there and the results could be confusing.

FWIW, we often see chalkbrood just as heavy on new wax as on old, indeed some of the worst chalk we have ever seen has been in the first generation of brood on new combs. We assess colonies chosen as breeders for chalk, and it can be a real random thing. One visit and there is this great colony with no or mininimal chalk, so you graft from it, declining the next one on the grounds of too much chalk. Next time round the positions are reversed.........and the one you bred from has some chalk now whilst the rejected one has cleared up.

So, fair to say that there is no real evidence in our practices to suggest shook swarming eliminates chalk.

Queen change is a different matter, but not just any old queen change. Must be from stock that is minimally affected by chalk for there to be much hope of it being effective. Queen age also is a factor, and young vigorous queens seem less bothered by chalk than older queens. Thus using a young queen freshly raised will probably help too.

Thanks Finman and Into The Lions Den

Into the lions den said:

Thus using a young queen freshly raised will probably help too.

Click to expand...

It does not help if you do not get new blood to your yard.

I suffered about chalkbrood 10 years. Then I started to do something.

First I byed new queens from 5 different place and I forgot "my splended bee stock".

From best hives I grafted queens. I kept in contaminated nucs new queens so long that I saw that do they resist the disease. For excample I reared 30 queens from one Elgon hive, which had no signs of chalbrood, but its daugters 80% got the disease.

From another hive the result was that only 20% got the disease.

I continued 3 years this way and the disease is almost eliminated.

It does not allways work but mostly.

When I see chalkbrood mummies in spring on the bottom of hive, it is better to at once kill the queen and give a spare queen. Every Spring I discard this way one or two chalkbrood queens.

The principle is: Rear so much queens that you may cast away any queen which shows tendency to disease or bad temper.
.

Last winter I had 50% spare queens.

I do not strerilize my mating nuc bottoms. New queen get then all diseases what they are earned.

.

There is no doubt the shook swarm is highly counter-intuitive. It seems to do everything wrong and yet in my experience they come bouncing back very strongly. As already suggested it triggers them into overdrive and the queen lays like mad to make up for the lost brood. However, I haven't done any controlled experiments but from my experience of doing a shook swarm on about half my colonies one year they turned out to be the strongest that year, compared to the others which were left alone. It was hardly a big trial - 4 of each if I remember correctly.

But it depends on a number of factors, timing in terms of the time of year and also of course location. The further north you are the less the benefit I would think and with somewhere like Finland with its very short summer it would be a non-starter I guess - although it would be interesting to know if anyone has tried it up there as they also have much longer daylight hours so that would compensate to some extent.

All I can say is if you have doubts - try it. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

If being done purely to stimulate the bees, what about a "rolling shook swarm" where brood is redistributed within the apiary rather than destroyed? Has anyone tried this with any success?

.
Roof tops, your Summer is not so long that you have afford tos destroy one cycle brood. That is most stupid what I have ever heard.

Rooftops. What is your average yield per hive that you may advice Finnish beekeepers about how to keep bees.

Something whong in beekeeping if hives, where brood are aborted, are the strongest than ever. That is simply a fault in the beekeepers eys or the hive is really have been sick.

I have kept so long bees that I do not believe what ever nonsense. Finland Summer PAH!

.