DerekM Board - A method of AS

[Tom Bick]

No sorry you have to understand what a colony does during swarming to compare this method to a swarm, what bees go with the queen and the ones that stay are one of the basic bits. It's a very long way from replicating what a swarm does when it leaves the hive. This idea will split a colony but it carries a whole load of problems associated with it.

 

[itma]

... it's more about copying the process by which a colony swarms in the wild.

... is very much in sympathy with what a colony does naturally when swarming.

Oh no it isn't!

...you have to understand what a colony does during swarming to compare this method to a swarm, what bees go with the queen and the ones that stay are one of the basic bits. It's a very long way from replicating what a swarm does when it leaves the hive. ...

Absolutely true!

 

[itma]

Seems a funny sort of AS.

Brood remains on the original stand. ... They will be rejoined by flyers.
Q and some non-fliers (nurse bees) go on foundation in a hive some yards away. And presumably need feeding.

...

This is nothing like the split that occurs with a real swarm.

 

[Elaine]

It's hardly a swarm and not even close compared to all the other swarm control methods available. I can just imaging the innocent reading this and thinking all we have to do is shake the bees out onto a blanket on the lawn of their back gardens then stand back and watch the potential problems that may happen.

You would serve your time better to train yourself to find the queen and Save yourself a whole load of trouble and time.

We have done the 'find the queen' method - (even unmarked I can usually find them ) and the success rate with it has not been so high. With letting them form their own cluster ouside the hive, and leaving them there until we see the scouts orientate on the cluster, and move off, the bees seem to be convinced they have swarmed , and we don't need to add brood, or put in a queen excluder for them to accept their new hive. If your concern is the number of airborne bees flying around looking for home - our experience has been that there are far fewer airborne returning bees than doing more traditional AS methods, and they settle again far quicker. I am interested to know what potential problems you believe will be caused by this method over and above the problems of any other AS method or natural swarm.

We are not advocating that everyone does this - it is just another suggestion for beekeepers. The are a number of people who have said that the AS method they have used doesn't reliably work on their strain of bees. We are describing a method which we have used, which has been reliable in convincing our bees that they have completed the process of leaving the hive, bivouacing outside in a cluster, then moving into a new home.

 

[Anduril]

The bees have slimmed the queen down and she is able to fly. Beginners would be disheartened while performing this technique the swarm flies away

 

[Elaine]

The bees have slimmed the queen down and she is able to fly. Beginners would be disheartened while performing this technique the swarm flies away

This is true of any AS method with an unclipped queen, unless you capture her, but so far we have seen that the bees all head up the sheet into the relative dark of the underside of the board - but I accept it is a risk. You can only try to improve the odds with bees - nothing is certain

 

[Tom Bick]

I am interested to know what potential problems you believe will be caused by this method over and above the problems of any other AS method or natural swarm.

I don't know how many times you have done this type of split before but the problems I see are.

You are shaking frames with queen cells on them and risking damage to them.
Shaking the majority of the bees from the frames placing them into a intermediate hive you risk chilling the brood.
The queen could be injured, or in the confusion killed by the bees (remember your tearing their home apart this will be panic for the bees)
The queen could take to the air in the confusion disappear over the fence and be lost.
The majority of the flying bees will return to the original hive.
The majority of the bees now clustering under the board are lost nurse bees who have never been out of the hive some will be very young bees. They are clustering because they don't know how to get back to the hive.

I could think of a few more but they are my main concerns.

 

[Elaine]

I don't know how many times you have done this type of split before but the problems I see are.

>>>> I accept there are risks - but a lot of these concerns are true of other AS methods too.

You are shaking frames with queen cells on them and risking damage to them.
>>>>yes, but the queen cell frame/s are shaken gently, just removing enough bees to see that the queen is _not_ on the frame

Shaking the majority of the bees from the frames placing them into a intermediate hive you risk chilling the brood.
>>>> yes, but is this risk any more likely than having to go through a hive several times to find the queen? It does not take long to do the whole process, and the original hive is closed up again quite quickly.

The queen could be injured, or in the confusion killed by the bees (remember your tearing their home apart this will be panic for the bees)
>>>>> Any intervention carries this risk. All I can say is that the bees are not showing any outward sign of high panic or stress. I work bare-handed, and did not receive a single sting, or any pinging from bees.

The queen could take to the air in the confusion disappear over the fence and be lost.
>>>> the bees seem to congregate on the sheet before deciding to move up into the dark - there are very few bees in the air. The queen flying away is a risk I take by choosing not to clip her.

The majority of the flying bees will return to the original hive.
>>>> We sat and watched them - nasinoving from under the board started very quickly, and very few bees took off and flew back to the original hive.

The majority of the bees now clustering under the board are lost nurse bees who have never been out of the hive some will be very young bees. They are clustering because they don't know how to get back to the hive.
>>>> I have been told that the bees that most easily 'fall' off the frames when they are shaken are the flying bees, so providing I haven't shaken too hard, it will be the nurse bees left on the frames.

I could think of a few more but they are my main concerns.

I think that on balance that the risks of a failed AS - and loosing a swarm, are greater than what we have doing.

 

[itma]

...
If you wait long enough, e.g. the time to make and drink a cup of coffee, a few bees will start to rise from the cluster and fly round the board for sometime, then fly away in directions away the original hive You have just convinced some scouts to go and look for new home. So some of the bees have been convinced they have swarmed.
...

Sorry but I don't think you have any justification for those statements (which I have bolded).


Bees returning to that cluster might be a different thing ... but still not "convincing them that they have swarmed".
Fliers will continue to depart the shakeout for some while. (Not all at once.) It doesn't indicate anything much.

When you move a hive 'more than three feet, less than 3 miles', foragers depart from the new location, but return to the old one - they don't "think they have swarmed".



With this shakeout, how long do you have to wait before you see fliers returning to the new hive (with Q & nurse bees & foundation)? Days?
Whereas, with a natural swarm, how long is it before foragers can be seen returning to their new home? Minutes?

 

[itma]

The bees have slimmed the queen down and she is able to fly. Beginners would be disheartened while performing this technique the swarm flies away

This is true of any AS method with an unclipped queen, unless you capture her ...

The risk (the probability of this happening) is NOT the same with "any AS method".

The risk has to be massively higher if you DELIBERATELY shake her out in the open, as compared to when simply trying to ensure you know which box she is in.
Or don't you accept that?

 

[rolande]

Moderately shake each frame on to the sheet check the queen ISNT on the frame and return to the original hive.

We used an intermediate box for the shook frames so we could empty out completely the original brood box and floor

I think where I must be misunderstanding the process is the instruction to 'moderately shake each frame' -I take that to mean that you're not shaking all the bees off. If that was the case then I still wouldn't be able to comprehend how you could be certain that the queen wasn't on the comb without having seen her elsewhere.

 

[user 6228]

I think where I must be misunderstanding the process is the instruction to 'moderately shake each frame' -I take that to mean that you're not shaking all the bees off. If that was the case then I still wouldn't be able to comprehend how you could be certain that the queen wasn't on the comb without having seen her elsewhere.

After shaking some of the bees off the frame its much easier and more reliable to see if you have a queen or not.

 

[user 6228]

Sorry but I don't think you have any justification for those statements (which I have bolded).


Bees returning to that cluster might be a different thing ... but still not "convincing them that they have swarmed".
Fliers will continue to depart the shakeout for some while. (Not all at once.) It doesn't indicate anything much.

When you move a hive 'more than three feet, less than 3 miles', foragers depart from the new location, but return to the old one - they don't "think they have swarmed".



With this shakeout, how long do you have to wait before you see fliers returning to the new hive (with Q & nurse bees & foundation)? Days?
Whereas, with a natural swarm, how long is it before foragers can be seen returning to their new home? Minutes?

Their behavoir is different from the usual fliers ... just try it and look.
we didnt wait for scouts to return to the cluster... the coffee was drunk and we had to move on.

Fliers come back to the new hive within a hour or so. I'll time it next time. The lack of confusion in the bees compared to the other AS we've tried is noticeable.

It does work ... Our surplus of colonies bear witness to that.
This is all small scale observation I dont have statisically significant numbers on it.

 

[Elaine]

The risk (the probability of this happening) is NOT the same with "any AS method".

The risk has to be massively higher if you DELIBERATELY shake her out in the open, as compared to when simply trying to ensure you know which box she is in.
Or don't you accept that?

When you are talking about an established queen, it is the worker bees that 'decide' when the queen should leave the colony to swarm, ie the right time for her to fly ( for the details, see Tom Seely's work) so, I don't think she is necessarily more likely to fly off. All I can go on is the research on honeybee behaviour, our observations, and the results, and so far, the method has been so successful that we thought it worth sharing, and if anyone decides it may work in their apiary, I would love to hear their results, positive or negative.

 

[Michael Palmer]

It does work ... Our surplus of colonies bear witness to that.

What is your honey crop like from this AS+parent colony? Having more colonies is nice. Having a larger crop is better.

 

[rolande]

After shaking some of the bees off the frame its much easier and more reliable to see if you have a queen or not.

So you shake some of the bees off the combs and then find the queen?

 

[Obee1]

Just realised that Elaine must own the same bees as Derek! Or she is intimate with his Taranovesque procedure.

Wondered why she was answering on his thread.

Obee

 

[user 6228]

Just realised that Elaine must own the same bees as Derek! Or she is intimate with his Taranovesque procedure.

Wondered why she was answering on his thread.

Obee

they are her Bees... I just do the Engineering and Physics bits like finding the bucket and the board

 

[user 6228]

So you shake some of the bees off the combs and then find the queen?

you shake the bees off and NOT find the queen.

 

[Jeff Buzz]

What if you do find the queen? do you stuck her in the bucket or in the hive