Demeree - honey in top brood frames

[nigel_f]

Hi

I would value some advice anyone may have regarding a secondary concern arising from employing the Demeree methods of swarm control.

Following the Demeree method I successfully prevent swarming by following all the well documented steps involved - essentially moving the original brood box and brood up to the top and putting the queen in a new box below with queen excluder and two supers between the bottom and top brood box.

Consistent with this method the top box needs to be inspected for queen cells within 4 to 7 days (opinions on the number of days seems to vary slightly).

When I inspect the top box after 7 days, general speaking a average of two thirds of the sealed brood has emerged and all the brood frames remaining have random dotted brood over the frames.

My secondary concern and what I would value advice on is that after just 7 days the bees seem to want to fill the now depleted brood frames in the top brood box with honey. They would appear to be bypassing two supers and storing honey in the top brood box as comb becomes available up there from brood emerging. To me this seems a waste as I have no way to extract honey from brood sized frames. Simply lifting the top brood box confirms the volume of honey being stored in it.

Is there any way to prevent this or has anyone else encountered this happening?

Thank you.

 

[Leigh]

I had exactly the same thing happen....tried demaree out of curiosity, and whilst results from a total of 1 test doesn't make for a good scientific result, I don't think I'll be doing it again anytime soon. It does however, make for an impressively tall hive and a nice extra lump of workers. My demareed colony are now on two 14x12 BB and four supers...the queen is laying it up as honey is taken out (3 days of constant rain should help with that!), but I can't imagine the whole lot being laid up. I've tried various swarm control methods over the years, but good ole wing clipping combined with fastidious queen cell culling seem to keep a colony together and making plenty of honey. If you have a landing board, you have a better chance of keeping your clipped queens. Worst case scenario (assuming you don't miss a queen cell, then it all goes up the spout) is a temporary queenless colony...and providing you have a new laying queen or two up your sleeve, you should be onto a winner. Unless increase is what you want, I can't see my way past what I'm doing now.....along with requeening at least every 2 seasons.

 

[masterBK]

Nigel: If you exchange the top BC (with its stored honey) with the bottom BC putting the queen on a comb into the bottom BC (ie demaree a second time) then the bees will move the stored honey out of the way for the queen to lay and hopefully put it into the supers. Alternatively set it aside and give it back to them as winter stores ie winter on a double. I use Demaree tops for queen rearing so don't find it a problem. Some use a snelgrove board to shunt the bees down at intervals to join their sisters. Snelgroving is essentially a modifed form of Demaree. The board prevents the downstairs bees from putting stores in the top BC.

 

[nigel_f]

Thanks for your reply Leigh.
Do you have both brood boxes directly one on top of the other at the bottom with a QE over the topmost one?
I've heard clipping a wing on the queen is recommended but I don't feel confident enough to do this. When the clipped Queen leaves the hive in a swarm and falls to the ground do the bees clump around her or do they return to the hive?
Thanks again for your advice.

 

[nigel_f]

Thanks also for your reply MasterBK.

I've read in many online tutorials for Demareeing that it should be repeated in 9/10 days time to completely suppress the hive's urge to swarm so that would be consistent with what you recommend.
A fellow beekeeper also advised me earlier in the season that bees would likely move honey up from brood frames in the BB to the supers above to facilitate room for the Queen to lay. In that particular instance though it related to over wintered stores of quite a few frames of capped honey in the BB which were still there well into spring and the BB was becoming rapidly filled with brood.
Thanks for your advice on this.

 

[Jeff Buzz]

Thanks for your reply Leigh.
Do you have both brood boxes directly one on top of the other at the bottom with a QE over the topmost one?
I've heard clipping a wing on the queen is recommended but I don't feel confident enough to do this. When the clipped Queen leaves the hive in a swarm and falls to the ground do the bees clump around her or do they return to the hive?
Thanks again for your advice.

If you get a swarm with a clipped queen bees will go off as usual and hang in a nearby tree for 20 mins or so. They do not al clump around the queen on the ground although a few might.
After they realise that the queen is not with them they swarm back to the hive.
The queen may climb back into the hive or you may find her and put her back in which case they will perhaps repeat the whole thing again the next day.
Or she may hang on the bottom or side of the hive with a cluster of bees around her.
If you find her perhaps better to drop her into a 5 frame nuc with a few bees, then take out all but 1 queen cell in the hive. You then have her as insurance and in a couple of weeks you have a new queen with all your bees and the old queen will have laid up loads of frames in the nuc that can be added to the main hive and the old queen dispatched.

 

[Oscarmonster]

I'm trying a Snelgrove board out this year to prevent the bees filling out the top brood box. Should leave it nice and empty after all brood has emerged. You just have to make sure they don't starve.

 

[Summerslease]

I'm trying a Snelgrove board out this year to prevent the bees filling out the top brood box. Should leave it nice and empty after all brood has emerged. You just have to make sure they don't starve.

I have demareed four hives this year for the first time. I used a modified Snelgrove board as recommended be Ken Basterfield (two entrances, one top one bottom, on opposite sides). I got the top box filled with honey (14x12 and very heavy), and the bottom box partly starved of bees. KB recommends moving the board round during inspections to drain the bees from top to bottom. This looks easy but wasn't with such heavy boxes. When I removed the boards on uniting the boxes I got out my saw and converted them to Snelgroves. If they decide to swarm again this year I'll try them out.

 

[YorkshireBees]

Simple.

Options:

1. Keep frames for feeding when stores are short during June gap or for Autumn feeding.
2. Re-Demaree and the bees will move it to the supers to make room for the queen to lay. Just make sure the Q has some space to lay!!