Bait hives

[Icing Sugar]

My cast swarm are often 5 kg. Such fills 2 langstroth boxes.


Reason is that prime swarm cannot leave because queen wing is cut.
They must wait a new queen, which can fly. That queen ought to be a leader of cast swarm, but now it has prime bees too.

I can only assume that a cast swarm so big that it fills 2 Langstroth boxes must have come from a parent colony that was housed in 3 or 4 Langstroth boxes. How can that possibly be, especially with such a short forage season in Finland? The only thing I can think of is as follows:

Somewhere near your bait hives I suspect there is a beekeeper who artificially builds their colonies up to "monster size", probably by adding frames of brood (ideally sealed) along with their attached non-flying nurse bees to their preferred production colonies. They probably build these so-called "colonies" up until they fill about 4 Langstroth boxes and then take them out to suitable pastures. Two or three weeks later these hives will be utterly bursting with enough workers to fill 6+ Langstroth boxes and there will be an unimaginable surplus of redundant nurse bees. These totally unnatural hive conditions will be perfect for inducing a swarm. However the beekeeper concerned will have the devil's own job finding every swarm cell in a stack of 4 Langstroth boxes and they won't want to interfere with the hive during a flow anyway (they might even hope that the flow is sufficient to inhibit any swarm inpulse, and those 4 boxes will be positioned underneath a skyscraper of supers into the bargain). Their queens (probably brought-in hybrids from a specialist breeder) are clipped, which might have bought them a few extra days to sort things out but the beekeeper probably lives about 100km from their preferred pastures and so doesn't get to check their hives as often as they might.

What a great shame for such a beekeeper when 60+% their workers swarm from such a hive during the flow. They were probably hoping for a yield of about 150kg from that one hive alone. Presumably all hope of that diappeared with the cast swarm, unless those young bees were never going to be old enough to become foragers during flow season anyway. (If the latter case is true then the artificial creation of such monster colonies was misguided from the outset).

I think there might be a beekeeper who lives near you who could benefit from your mentorship. What with your 50 years experience, you should have the knowledge and skills to really bring them on well.

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[BMH]

I cant tell if the above post is sarcastic or not?

You realise Finman artificially creates these monster hives that fill 6 lang boxes and then belittles anyone who harvests less than 120kg per 'hive'.

Not really a fair comparison is it (says the 12 hive owner).

 

[Finman]

I can only assume..

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Good boy. You can do the same.


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[Finman]

You realise Finman artificially creates these monster hives that fill 6 lang

artificially is they key word. I started that art in the year 1966. I bought tens ow swarms and united them to 4 kg colonies. It is 2 langstroth boxes. They all gove 40 kg honey per hive and drew 3 boxes langstroth foundations.


I have been on that way 51 years.

And then....

Soya+yeast and terrarium heaters.

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Prime swarm filled almost a nuc . ... What I only say is: JOIN THEM!!!
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[Millet]

Do you make Dough Nuts Finny. If you do not, start now and change your name to doughnut.

 

[Finman]

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When you have swarms, join them to the colony which has brood. Because it takes 4 weeks before the swarm get new nurser bees.

Brood in the hive quarantees continuos flow of home workers and bees in forage age can forage.

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[Finman]

Do you make Dough Nuts Finny. If you do not, start now and change your name to doughnut.

You old kidny pie!!! I love you!!! Hog kidney in millet flours!

 

[Little John]

Bees have a strange habit of taking up residence almost anywhere though...as though opportunity was more important than finding the best possible cavity.

I very much agree with that. Based on my limited experience of swarming (from former days when I used to collect them), much appears to depend on how the swarming procedure itself is conducted.

Some swarms re-assemble on a convenient tree branch, and are then off and away within minutes of doing so. That suggests to me that scouts have already determined where their next home is located, and will thus have been checking it out - perhaps for a few days beforehand.

Others appear to swarm first, and only think about where they will be setting-up home afterwards. Those swarms often hang about in trees for several days, presumably whilst the scouts are checking out what real estate is available. In this latter 'beggars can't be choosers' case, they appear to settle for almost anything in order to get out of the weather.

The events surrounding the selection of 40L as being optimum are somewhat suspect, and I wouldn't rely on that figure too much. The best swarm I ever caught was in a 29L box, wih an entrance only inches off the ground. I'll shortly be putting out a couple of 20L (5-frame 14x12) boxes, and I'm reasonably confident that this size is as good as any other. Whether there's a swarm within range to actually be caught however, is a different matter. Not too much confidence there, I'm afraid ...
LJ

 

[user 6228]

Without beekeepers to look after them do you think a swarm would be able to expand and store enough honey to survive the winter in a 6 frame national nuc?
My experience is they would struggle. Are they going into a 6 frame nuc because there isn't anything else suitable available or are they Italians and think there still in Italy?

Read T.D. Seeley's work on this (e.g. the honeybee democracy). Honeybees will optimise to a set of criteria independent of swarm size. They take the best they have found but they dont always find the best possible.

 

[Finman]

I
The events surrounding the selection of 40L as being optimum are somewhat suspect, and I wouldn't rely on that figure too much. The best swarm I ever caught was in a 29L box, wih an entrance only inches off the ground. I'll shortly be putting out a couple of 20L (5-frame 14x12) boxes, and I'm reasonably confident that this size is as good as any other. Whether there's a swarm within range to actually be caught however, is a different matter. Not too much confidence there, I'm afraid ...
LJ

The scientist only said that they have compared, and 40 litre atracted most.

These guys in this forum have not compared anything. Odd attitude towars knowledge.
But this forum has so much "knowledge" which has nothing to do with practice.


In USA swarm catching is serious thing, because they try to catch Africanized bees before they settle down into houses.

 

[Finman]

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Basic instinct genes have not changed during 1last 00 years in bees. I bet.

When I started beekeeping, normal beehive has as one brood box and then guys added one Super.

Bees were mongrel Black Bees. No one bred them They just existed.

I bought tens ow swarm when I started.

Biggest swarms occupied one Langstroth box. Not more. The Cast occupied about half box.

I joined 2-3 swarms that they filled 2 Langstroth boxes.

 

[Finman]

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Today's Carniolan mongrel swarms here very small


Were have a wild Carniolan stocks in my district. Their swarms are small, and I believe that I know the reason.

When willow starts to bloom, the hive starts brood rearing. After 4 weeks the hive has enough new bees so, that I can say that they have. The colony does not even fill one box when it swarms. --- And no varroa treatment in those.

But at same time the hive has already queen cells, when first new workers started to born.. I thought, that did I keep to tight the bees????

Then I counted that when the colony got into mind its swarming, it hardly had bees, because wintered bees die and new bees are starting to emerge. Perhaps smarming is connected in wilderness to varroa resistancy.


I have had same kind of Carniolan and queen were imported from Slovakia.

Long time ago I had small colonies too. The had only 4 frame colony, and they swarmed.


But nowadays a bred Italian stock needs 2 boxes to lay, and 4-6 boxes for honey. Even 50 years ago old farts said that they cannot keep Italian bees. The queen lays the brood box full in a week and then it swarms. They did not get any honey from those.

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[Little John]

The scientist only said that they have compared, and 40 litre atracted most.

Exactly - but from this finding (that is, from the results of a single-variable experiment), people are now assuming that setting-out a 40L box is the best method of catching swarms. Seeley himself said that there are other factors regarding bait boxes which could be investigated to advantage (my words).

Perhaps the most telling event of Seeley's experiment was: when the bait boxes were initially set up - which box did the first released swarm select ? None of them.

They chose to set-up home in the chimney of the only cottage on the otherwise deserted island being used for the experiment. But - because that chimney wasn't part of the single-variable experiment's design, that event was ignored, and the chimney capped with wire mesh to prevent it from being preferentially selected again.
LJ

 

[Finman]

Exactly - but from this finding (that is, from the results of a single-variable experiment), people are now assuming that setting-out a 40L box is the best method of catching swarms. Seeley himself said that
LJ

But you can put what ever you want without Seeley's comments. No one commads you.

Best or what ever. Quite big box to put onto tree if the forest is not own.

In my country very much swarms go into house chimneys, and they are impossible to get them out alive, when they have started to make combs. And they all die in winter in stone tube.

 

[Finman]

.I looked from google the term "optimal size of bait hive".

Every one repeat that 40 litres.

But Thermosolar writing says that according their experience " a swarm of 3 kg is by far not the maximum!"

And that hive nees 60 litres space.
http://thermosolarhive.com/en/determining-optimal-drone-biomass-respect-swarm-control/

 

[drex]

My experience is limited to only a few years, but in that time I have seen two colonies set up home in the open. One they built comb under my top bar hive and the other under a thick branch. Nucs and full sized brood boxes were available as bait hives!

 

[Poly Hive]

Just a polite reminder.

Bees do nothing invariably.

PH

 

[Beefriendly]

Exactly - but from this finding (that is, from the results of a single-variable experiment), people are now assuming that setting-out a 40L box is the best method of catching swarms. Seeley himself said that there are other factors regarding bait boxes which could be investigated to advantage (my words).
LJ

Yes, height, entrance width, facinf direction etc. Worth bearing in mind Seeley was using Italian bees, the 40l optimum size may not be the optimum size for other strains of bees. I catch occasional local mongrel swarms in empty nuc boxes that have ignored nearby empty national hives.
An aspect of Seeley's work I'd like to have seen him look at is competition for nest sites. He just used one swarm with multiple nest sites.
With our modern apiaries concentrating colonies of bees in small areas there must be some element of this going on if they start swarming around the same time.

 

[Swarm]

They chose to set-up home in the chimney of the only cottage on the otherwise deserted island being used for the experiment. But - because that chimney wasn't part of the single-variable experiment's design, that event was ignored, and the chimney capped with wire mesh to prevent it from being preferentially selected again.
LJ

LOL, so they chose a nice large upper entrance, not sealed and not insulated either.

 

[must_dash]

Reading this with interest as I live in Italy and just prepared 3 boxes for them. All about 40ltrs......
Time will tell.