Demaree pick up

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Never having knowing performed a Demaree. I'm a keen Bailey comb exchanger and have noticed that these colonies rarely go on to swarm.
Thinking about the principles involved when performing a Bailey exchange where the queen gets separated from the brood by a queen excluder. Has anybody used a Bailey comb exchange as swarm prevention?[/QUOTE]

Yes I do and I think it works.
http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=22422
 
Ok so I have checked again today. As per the original post I demaree'd this colony on finding queen cells. The queen was placed on a frame of open brood and one frame of drawn comb. The rest was foundation.
After checking today, there is still no more drawn foundation. The queen is still on the couple of frames, but there is now a charged queen cell downstairs. This cell is on the bottom of the frame of brood.
Question is what should I do now?
 
Is it relevant

Fourth year beek and still a beginner and this is a fascinating thread. I don't think I have had a perfect AS yet despite best precautions. Fascinated by the idea of transferring HM into a box on the original site without any brood whatsoever to mimic a true swarm but does the fact that the Queen and the flying bees are back in their original position do nothing to quell swarm fever?
 
Fourth year beek and still a beginner and this is a fascinating thread. I don't think I have had a perfect AS yet despite best precautions. Fascinated by the idea of transferring HM into a box on the original site without any brood whatsoever to mimic a true swarm but does the fact that the Queen and the flying bees are back in their original position do nothing to quell swarm fever?

All I know is it works for me. I have performed a Demaree on several of my colonies and they all seem happy enough so far. I didn't bother checking the lower BB on most as I can tell by the bee numbers / activity in the supers that they haven't swarmed!

The one I did check, as they didn't seem that busy in the supers, I found the marked Q on the 2nd or 3rd frame laying away like crazy. Put the frame back and re-assembled the hive.

After demareeing a colony I leave it at least 2 weeks before I even bother checking the lower BB.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top