Away in April

[The New beekeeper]

Hi everyone
Unfortunately I am going to be away for the whole of April. I live in. North Devon and my worry is that my bees may swarm. At the moment they all ( 4 Hives) are active and when i had a quick look through them about a week ago, found the Queen in all of them and they all had some eggs and Larvae. My question is wether to put one or two supers with drawn frames. What would you do? don't say i won't go away please. Iwill appreciate your kind replies

 

[Murox]

Well what else can you do? have a fellow keeper manage them for you? You don't mention what hives you have, I might put a second brood box on (no excluder) if its BS National with either drawn comb or foundation, whatever I had and then hope for the best, and sort it all out when I got home.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Hi everyone
Unfortunately I am going to be away for the whole of April. I live in. North Devon and my worry is that my bees may swarm. At the moment they all ( 4 Hives) are active and when i had a quick look through them about a week ago, found the Queen in all of them and they all had some eggs and Larvae. My question is wether to put one or two supers with drawn frames. What would you do? don't say i won't go away please. Iwill appreciate your kind replies

Are you a member of your local association? The answer is to get somebody there to look after them. Trade that off by letting beginners look in under supervision?

 

[Amari]

Hi everyone
Unfortunately I am going to be away for the whole of April. I live in. North Devon and my worry is that my bees may swarm. At the moment they all ( 4 Hives) are active and when i had a quick look through them about a week ago, found the Queen in all of them and they all had some eggs and Larvae. My question is wether to put one or two supers with drawn frames. What would you do? don't say i won't go away please. Iwill appreciate your kind replies

I would be reluctant to ask another beekeeper you've not previously met, to look after four hives for a month - quite a big ask. Just give them plenty of room as above and there's a good chance they might not swarm. A swarm is not a disaster unless you have close neighbours.

 

[enrico]

It really isn't the end of the world. A swarm is not necessarily going to happen, if it does then it does! You will still be left with a hive even if it is a depleted one, you will still hopefully have a queen eventually as that is how bees reproduce. Leave a bait hive in the local vicinity and just hope for the best. I would offer to check them but north Devon is a bit too far for me!
Think of it this way, even if you were home they might swarm!
When you get back check carefully for the queen, it helps if you mark the old queen or even clip her wings, check for open queen cells but don't do anything rash until you know exactly what you have in the hives.
E

 

[Newbeeneil]

If it was me I would put an extra brood box on top separated with a sheet of newspaper. If the bees need the extra space they would be able to access it.