calling all beekeepers with years of experience!!

[victor meldrew]

Have kept bees 20 years max 6 colonies, This year I have/are experiencing a newly mated travelled queen , heading a colony split three ways, being constantly usurped by supercedure cells (always 2 and always central on a comb devoid of brood).
Norton's advice is the keep on top of these cells until the progency of the new queen become dominant!. Having said that , I have done such introductions in the past without this phenonemum occuring?.
Sorry Wendy but my years/ colony numbers fall outside your criteria ,ie ,hardly a clinical analysis of the situation but in 20 years I've chatted to lots of beekeepers, inspectors, lecturers, read lots of books ,without coming across any
references to these happenings on the scale appearing lately.
Maybe they have indeed always been happening but are simply being flagged up more with the advent of "T'internet" ?.

John Wilkinson

 

[jon]

John. I have been keeping bees for a much shorter time than you but the amount of swarm and supersedure cells being produced this year is incredible.
I did An AS on one at the start of June and it started making queen cells again at the start of July. It was only over about 7 frames. I removed them and removed some brood to weaken it and checked a week later to find more queen cells. I removed these on Wednesday and today I suspect I have lost a swarm as I found a miniscule capped queen cell which they must have made on a 3 day old larva and I didn't see the marked queen. The buggers are determined to swarm this year.
The upside is no shortage of QCs for nucs so swings and roundabouts.
I had 3 nice queens hatched today in roller cages so 3 more nucs started.
Most of the colonies I artificially swarmed in May are trying to swarm again.

 

[Hivemaker.]

The problem with using all these swarm cells for making up nuc's is that you are propagating more swarming bee's,so never ending story.

 

[jon]

All bees want to swarm but some are more swarmy than others. The QCs I use are not all swarm cells as some are supersedure and I only use those from my best colonies.
This year all the colonies seem to want to swarm for whatever reason.
What about yours, Hivemaker, have you many which have not tried to swarm yet?

 

[Hivemaker.]

Around 25% have been in swarming mode,but i don't use any of there cells,or allow them to raise a new queen from one,if or when the clipped queen gets lost they are re queened,i used to also use swarm cells until i learnt the error of my ways.

 

[Poly Hive]

I sincerely feel that this point about communications is a critical one.

Many things that went observed but unmentioned are now discussed daily.

Makes an odds that.

PH

 

[Hawklord]

Around 25% have been in swarming mode,but i don't use any of there cells,or allow them to raise a new queen from one,if or when the clipped queen gets lost they are re queened,i used to also use swarm cells until i learnt the error of my ways.

What method do you use for queen rearing Pete?

 

[jon]

Around 25% have been in swarming mode,but i don't use any of there cells,or allow them to raise a new queen from one,if or when the clipped queen gets lost they are re queened,i used to also use swarm cells until i learnt the error of my ways.

Only 25% is impressive this year. What type of bee do you work with, something like Norton's Buckfast?

 

[Hivemaker.]

Hawklord,i use grafting,from colonys that tend to supercede instead of swarm.
Jon, yes a lot of them are of the buckfast strain,being as i live not far from there they were obviously popular in this area,plus i have just bought some of Nortons Queens,and am very pleased with them .I also have another strain,which i'm not so impressed with,but i have a use for them in mind.