Buckfast swarmings

[seymour]

Hi everybody
New to the Forum, glad to meet you all. Last year I purchased a nucleus of "Buckfast " bees. This year they have swarmed a total of 5 times within a period of about 2 weeks, and yet I read everywhere that they are not especially swarmy. After the first swarm has gone should I then go in and cut out all Queen cells ??
Thanks for any help

John

 

[Onge]

Welcome.

If you don't artificially swarm them they will continue throwing out casts until all the queen cells are gone.

Good luck.

 

[seymour]

Thanks for the quick response. Do I take it then that most people on here do artificial swarming each year ? I live in France in the countryside and I usually just let them go and catch them. My old bees ( unknown make ) never threw casts after the first lot.

 

[Hivemaker.]

I live in France in the countryside and I usually just let them go and catch them.
Hi Seymour,only artificial swarm if needed....the clue is in the word....beekeeping.

 

[Onge]

If you want to catch them and increase or recombine go for it

 

[Finman]

.
5 swarms!
1-2 is natural.
3 swarn means that hive is too small or it is full of syrup and rape honey.

 

[Crg]

Hi everybody
New to the Forum, glad to meet you all. Last year I purchased a nucleus of "Buckfast " bees. This year they have swarmed a total of 5 times within a period of about 2 weeks, and yet I read everywhere that they are not especially swarmy. After the first swarm has gone should I then go in and cut out all Queen cells ??
Thanks for any help

John

I see you have langstroth hives, do you keep them on double brood?

I've found the swarminess of bees advertised as "buckfast" can vary a lot between breeders. Do you know the background of the queens you got? ie were they something crossed with buckfast?

 

[seymour]

Hi evryone
My hives are Langstroth Jumbo. I got the bees from a french beekeeper. He asserts they are Buckfast as that is all he keeps. Other than that the language barrier is a problem. They did have an uncapped super full of rape honey and another empty one before they swarmed.They are much more docile than my previous bees of unknown race.After the second swarm I cut out all remaining queen cells (10) but obviously missed some.

 

[MJBee]

Hi Seymour, welcome to the forum, where are you in France? I'm in the north of the Dordogne.

 

[seymour]

Hi MJBee
I am Lower Normandy, biggest nearby town is Domfront. Bees have been here since 2002, us since 2004. Bringing two hives over on the ferry was " interesting " Been trying to find a source of queens, nucs etc. since we arrived, found this guy last year. Am running a Beekee course at the moment, got 11 students !

 

[Davebee]

Hello
I am near Sourdeval so not far away. Please can you either supply me with bees or put me in touch with someone I can buy them from.
My French is very poor so I would prefer English speaking but not essencial.
Many thanks.
Regards Dave

 

[Norton]

I got the bees from a french beekeeper. He asserts they are Buckfast as that is all he keeps. Other than that the language barrier is a problem.

Are they F1 from selected breeders or are they F2 or 3 open mated in the guy's apiary? He might call them Buckfast but if he isn't selecting and breeding then he should call them something else.

 

[Into the lions den]

Nortons point is important. I know beekeepers who only keep one type of bee and are happy with that. Only thing is they have not added new stock for a long long time, and their bees long since reverted to close to the local type.

France is a vast resource of A.m.m., many more colonies of it than all the colonies in the UK put together, and they can be pretty tetchy, although Normandy is not generally considered an particualrly prominent area for the 'noires'. The improved gentleness of the stock does imply that your breeder may well have the strain he purports to sell, or at least relatively recently so.

However..............'Buckfast' bees are sold in many places and from many breeders, and from some they are utterly unrecogniseable as the same bees sold under the same description by others.

On here you have two people at least who REALLY know the Buckfast subject, Norton and Hivemaker, and you should pay close attention to what either or both of them say.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

The concern is that just because someone had a true buckfast queen once, they continue to call their bees buckfasts when they clearly are not. This may not be the case with your supplier.

There is - somewhere - a youtube video of someone proudly showing off his buckfast queen. Very nice she was too, and large, but the brood pattern that was visible was terrible indication lots of diploid drones (inbreeding).....
There are buckfasts and there are buckfasts...


Whatever bee you have, if the bees are going to swarm then an A/S, Demaree or removing the queen to a nuc and dealing with the queencells in all the above cases is what's required.

 

[tonybloke]

Nortons point is important. I know beekeepers who only keep one type of bee and are happy with that. Only thing is they have not added new stock for a long long time, and their bees long since reverted to close to the local type.

France is a vast resource of A.m.m., many more colonies of it than all the colonies in the UK put together, and they can be pretty tetchy, although Normandy is not generally considered an particualrly prominent area for the 'noires'. The improved gentleness of the stock does imply that your breeder may well have the strain he purports to sell, or at least relatively recently so.

However..............'Buckfast' bees are sold in many places and from many breeders, and from some they are utterly unrecogniseable as the same bees sold under the same description by others.

On here you have two people at least who REALLY know the Buckfast subject, Norton and Hivemaker, and you should pay close attention to what either or both of them say.

 

[Gardenbees]

I could say "I have always kept Buckfast bees" as the ones I have bought, and raised queens from, were sold as Buckfast. In fact, the original Buckfast type of bee was itself a mixture, and it takes skill and effort (and a level of selective breeding not usually available in the Gloucestershire countryside) to maintain the exact same type of bee.

In practice, I've had queens which produced offspring, including new queens, which broadly fit the Wikipedia description of a Buckfast bee, but with variations in both colour and behaviour. Particularly marked is the difference in hardiness: I had one colony that wouldn't get out of bed for less than 10degreesC, and others that foraged vigorously at near-frost temperatures, working winter garden flowers in great numbers.