Commercial swarm control

[johnandyrob]

What method of swarm control do commercial beekeepers use and why

 

[Chris B]

"Prevention is better than cure" has to be the overriding principle. In other words breeding/buying non-swarmy queens, giving plenty of space, regular honey harvesting, pruning bee numbers (and using them for nucs) - these are probably my main tactics.

But I clip queens wings and inspect on a 10 day cycle as far as possible. I'll destroy queen cells I find and it's surprising how many will give up swarming (50% maybe). Some will end up hopelessly queenless and have to be given a new queen, but if no queen is available the colony gets united with something else.

Oh and bait hives catch some swarms that slip through the net.

 

[OXFORDBEE]

I find and it's surprising how many will give up swarming (50% maybe).

Do you see a difference between sites, are stocks in good nectar locations more likely to raise more queen cells?

 

[Chris B]

I'm not 100% sure. I can only point to one apiary this year where swarming was minimal, and surprise surprise it was the best yielder by far. Was that because of low swarming or was the low swarming because it was a high yielder? I wish I knew.

 

[oliver90owner]

Was that because of low swarming or was the low swarming because it was a high yielder? I wish I knew.

Even if the colonies were 'hard workers', they would not be able to get the higher yields if they lost swarms. Even without actually swarming, losses are likely considerable with just the preparations, for the deed, going on.

Your management would still lose new potential foraging bees (early enough to be useful for the honey crop) if swarm cells are produced, because the queen's lay-rate will be reduced (slimming down for swarming) and those bees not foraging, nor servicing larvae, nor wax building (in other words the bees hanging around awaiting the imminent swarm), must be seen as non-productive at least for a few days (and most likely when a surplus is available to be foraged). That might be half a super of honey?

So I reckon it is most likely the former, but the real problem is how to emulate that in all your apiaries!

Regards, RAB

 

[johnandyrob]

Thanks Chris

 

[OXFORDBEE]

I'm not 100% sure. I can only point to one apiary this year where swarming was minimal, and surprise surprise it was the best yielder by far. Was that because of low swarming or was the low swarming because it was a high yielder? I wish I knew.

Hmm, I think I know what you mean. Did the low swarming lead to a good honey yield or did a strong flow bring and end to the swarming.

I think Manley mentions a strong flow can bring swarming to an abrupt stop. So a strong flow with non-swarmy bees might help your observation...

Are the bees between apiaries of similar types? When was your main nectar yield on this site, was it later in the season?

On the whole I've found that queen cell bashing might lead to abandonment of swarming but as a control measure only seems to really work when accompanied by subsequent bad weather.

This years urge to swarm has been much less than in previous years. Maybe the rather rough summer had an effect.

 

[Haughton Honey]

I found that in the main my heaviest swarming activity was in late April/early May when we had that fairly long dry and warm spell.

After that point the swarming seemed to be minimal.

The majority of my Queens are Buckfast F1/F2/F3

 

[victor meldrew]

I'll destroy queen cells I find and it's surprising how many will give up swarming (50% maybe). Some will end up hopelessly queenless and have to be given a new queen, but if no queen is available the colony gets united with something els

An old friend of mine used the cell knock down principle
He used a 10 day schedule and lost very few swarms .
When he saw my methods, he gave me a jaundiced look and said "Sooooo much verk to save the odd svarm, you English like making verk"
Yes he was from the Ukraine and alas is no longer with us !.
VM

 

[Finman]

.
If you break queen cells, bees try again. The queen almost stops laying and it will be lack of foragers 6 weeks later. 3 weeks with without brood is not a hole, it is a gave.
Here carniolans make a brood brake in such time where they should rear workers for main yield.
Italians swarm later and short of brood is not bad as with carniolans.

I have not got rid of swarming. When I admitted it, life is much easier..

- cut the wing of queens. It hinders sudden exit.
- when you see the swarm cells, make at once false swarm. The queen starts again to lay and you need not to worry about swarming any more.

- essential in false swarm is to give a box of foundation to draw. It stops the swarming fever.
- the brood part may swarm. Take care with excluder that a new queen cannot come out.

Actually a false swarm forages well. First it has not much brood and the whole swarm concentrate itself into foraging. When combs are ready, swarming fever is away, join again the hive parts. Leave the new queen into the joined hive.

That is easy. You need not check the hive because the hive feels that it has swarmed.

If you look GOOGLE "MAAREC swarm preventing", it tells main points.

 

[Swarm]

.
- when you see the swarm cells, make at once false swarm. The queen starts again to lay and you need not to worry about swarming any more.

- essential in false swarm is to give a box of foundation to draw. It stops the swarming fever.

Theoretically yes, but not a certainty. I did precisely this and made up AS in the morning. The bees still swarmed that afternoon.

 

[tonybloke]

Theoretically yes, but not a certainty. I did precisely this and made up AS in the morning. The bees still swarmed that afternoon.

a Queen excluder under the A/S would have stopped that from happening.

did you place any brood into the A/S? it's unusual for bees to leave brood

 

[Swarm]

The frame she was on plus another and absolutely no queen cell on either

 

[Finman]

Theoretically yes, but not a certainty. I did precisely this and made up AS in the morning. The bees still swarmed that afternoon.

nothing is certainty with bees. if you want 100% or even 90% certainty, it is better do something else than nurse bees.

What I told is practice. I have made beekeeping 48 years - you mean in theory or what?

My friend has nursed bees decades. She has never clipped queen wings.

When I retired a year ago, I helped her in yard nursing (6 hives).

I clipped wings and we made false swarms at once when queen cells emerged.
When the main yield started. If you join parts earlier, the strong hive may swarm again when it has no work to do.

One brood part swarmed but she caught it. One small swarm escaped.
One unknown swarm arrived to the garden and she got from it 60 kg honey. We put from swarm fever hives brood frames to strengten its foraging power.

The result was the she got 80 kg average yield.
The hives were huge towers.
We eliminted queens of angry hives and in autumn had splended young layers.

Here is not a bit theory: 80 kg honey per hive.

In earlier years she lost the most her swarms to the sky blue. When you loose half of bees, you loose 80% of your yield.

 

[Hebeegeebee]

Theoretically yes, but not a certainty. I did precisely this and made up AS in the morning. The bees still swarmed that afternoon.

I've had that too. I think they had already made their mind up to leave and the artificial swarm was too late. A clipped queen helps here! In my case I popped the queen back in as I found her on the grass and the bees came back. The next day they tried again so I put a queen excluder under. A few hours later they made a half-hearted attempt to swarm and gave up. Queen excluder removed the next weekend. All OK.

 

[Finman]

.
One system with American and Australian professionals is this:

when the hive is growing, every week brood and food frames are lifted over the excluder and the queen get a box of empty combs to lay. They shoul bee some foundations too. That keeps the hive busy and the queen has a huge space to lay.

i have not tried this but our 3000 hive owner use it. But still he must check 450 hives every day to see, do they have queen cells.

My difficulty is that I rear brood areas 2 months with pollen patty and electrict heating.
When hives are full of brood, we get 2-3 weeks blooming brake after dandelion. When bees have not job to do, it is difficult to stop their swarming. When rape or raspberry starts blooming, bees forget the swarming. But if the hive is full of wet nectar, fever arises again. a hive may bring 8 kg nectar every day from raspberry.

"The biggest hives swarm first" says MAAREC. It is a pitty but so they do.

 

[Finman]

A clipped queen helps

Queen excluder removed the next weekend. All OK.

I must add an excluder to my handling. So I do not need to worry about succes rate.

 

[Into the lions den]

This is a massive subject. One you could actually write a book about, and indeed have even been approached to do just that. (Not going to do it so keep the dogs off about commercial postings.)

<G> As it is commercial swarm control we are being asked about should we be discussing this subject? What if the swarm is not commercial? Is the control of commercial swarms and non commercial swarms different? I understand that the ones that stand no chance of making money will be favoured here due to their non commercial nature.

Seriously though, the subject is vast. Although his seasonal rythm and forage patterns are different, Finmans responses are basically sound. Cutting down cells may well delay swarming, but it just leaves a colony with a prolonged period of instability. Use their natural wishes to your advantage and take the increase, you can always re-unite later to get a powerful colony for a late flow and have a young queen headed colony going into winter.

As regards the idea that knocking the cells down gives you another 9 or 10 days, well that is often nonsense. If swarm fever is advanced and cells due to hatch in a few days then swarming is inevitable, whether you do it for them (preferable) or they do it naturally. If the queen has started to slim down you need to act immediately. I have seen colonies swarm after being dealt with, sometimes even while you are still in the same apiary, as the preparations were too advanced and they went anyway and would just draw emergency cells after the swarm departed.

In the most swarmy conditions, which seems to be while weather is still good at the tailing off of a spring or early summer flow, they can attempt swarming only three or four days after an examination, so it is not to be messed around with.

Our procedures vary throughout the early season, with a heap of variables to be taken into account. Advancement of preparations? Suitability of bee to breed from...linked to identifiable cause of swarming....linked to health linked factors. Availability of gear. Desire or otherwise for increase. Skill level of staff member doing the work. Age of queen. The biggy of them all for us though is 'time left before the heather migration starts', and the closely associated 'time left till the calluna starts to flower'. No point in having a load of recently split babies at the time you earn your living (which is strictly heather for us, all other honey types are actually a convenient by product of preparing bees for heather.) Also virgin queens put out on the moors in hope have a rather poor mating rate, and those late splits quite often need to be shaken out at seasons end as apparently queenless or as drone layers.

Each day we have a team briefing before we head out to the field, and the swarm procedure changes almost weekly.......sometimes subtly sometime radically, all according to the factors listed before.

 

[johnandyrob]

Thanks for that Finman thir is some interesting content on that web page

 

[mbc]

Some tricks I use :
-pile the supers high early season ( if they need one give them at least two )
-clear down spring honey onto a super of foundation( seems to relieve the brood nest of lots of young wax builders)
-bleed strong colonies of bees , either frames of brood, young bees or both
-if they persist in building q cells some sort of AS is required