Easy swarm control - is there such a thing?

[domino]

Over the winter I like to look into things that I struggle with during the season. So I'm revisiting swarm control.

I find a lot of the methods a bit of a faf what with all the box juggling required. However, I've come to the conclusion I'm just being lazy.

This season I've set aside four hives just to make honey and I'm not sure, based on previous feedback from here, that my existing method of swarm control is the best to maintain hive strength to make a decent crop.

My existing, lazy, method of swarm control is this:

1. See the bees starting to swarm
2. Find the queen and put her in a new nuc with some bees and a bit of brood.
3. Look for eggs in the original hive.
4. Knockdown any queen cells in the original hive
5. Come back in a few days and pick one of the newly drawn cells and knock down the rest.
6. let them make a new queen.

I'm curious about people other experiences of:

a. other methods of swarm control
b. strategies to delay the bees swarming

Thanks

 

[Erichalfbee]

A Demarree would give you swarm control and honey.
Rather than letting the parent colony make its own new queen you might be better giving them a new mated queen.
I tried that, bringing on a few nucs over the winter to do just that. Time will tell if it’s going to work.

 

[madasafish]

Get non swarmy bees
Change queen every year
Give lots of space when a flow on.
Knock down QCs when they occur and keep doing it.

 

[drex]

For the second year I am taking six home made 5 frame wooden nucs through winter. When I shut them down for winter I add a wooden eke on the top, plastic sheet on top of frames and then crown board on top of eke. They invariably need fondant before winters end. I remove the plastic sheet, put fondant in the eke, and plastic over the top. The whole lot are in one block with plenty of Celotex round the outside. Last year all came through and this year all are Ok so far. All contain 2017 queens. So I have six spare queens, and these nucs make excellent brood factories ( a la Michael Palmer) to boost the production colonies prior to the rape. The nucs take off really fast and are brilliant at drawing out foundation. Go for it Erica. It is a win win.

 

[madasafish]

For the second year I am taking six home made 5 frame wooden nucs through winter. When I shut them down for winter I add a wooden eke on the top, plastic sheet on top of frames and then crown board on top of eke. They invariably need fondant before winters end. I remove the plastic sheet, put fondant in the eke, and plastic over the top. The whole lot are in one block with plenty of Celotex round the outside. Last year all came through and this year all are Ok so far. All contain 2017 queens. So I have six spare queens, and these nucs make excellent brood factories ( a la Michael Palmer) to boost the production colonies prior to the rape. The nucs take off really fast and are brilliant at drawing out foundation. Go for it Erica. It is a win win.

Almost exactly what I am doing..

 

[jeff33]

A Demarree would give you swarm control and honey.
Rather than letting the parent colony make its own new queen you might be better giving them a new mated queen.
I tried that, bringing on a few nucs over the winter to do just that. Time will tell if it’s going to work.

Demaree is a good option but don't wait until they are ready to swarm to do it otherwise it will not work. Depending on your bees you may want to do early in the season and again early summer or just the once.

I have heard people saying that if you let a hive raise its own queen it will reduce production. Personally I don't know how you can compare that as no 2 hives are 2 same nor 2 seasons.

 

[Lancs Lad]

Take a leaf out of the big boys book, they keep it nice and simple.
Under a thread Commercial swarm control methods

 

[B+.]

I'm curious about people other experiences of:

a. other methods of swarm control
b. strategies to delay the bees swarming

Have you seen this video clip? (https://youtu.be/Wm7RqXJD4_w?t=23m45s)
By far the best approach is to use young queens from a low-swarming line.

 

[Uncle Betty]

Over the winter I like to look into things that I struggle with during the season. So I'm revisiting swarm control.

I find a lot of the methods a bit of a faf what with all the box juggling required. However, I've come to the conclusion I'm just being lazy.

This season I've set aside four hives just to make honey and I'm not sure, based on previous feedback from here, that my existing method of swarm control is the best to maintain hive strength to make a decent crop.

My existing, lazy, method of swarm control is this:

1. See the bees starting to swarm
2. Find the queen and put her in a new nuc with some bees and a bit of brood.
3. Look for eggs in the original hive.
4. Knockdown any queen cells in the original hive
5. Come back in a few days and pick one of the newly drawn cells and knock down the rest.
6. let them make a new queen.

I'm curious about people other experiences of:

a. other methods of swarm control
b. strategies to delay the bees swarming

Thanks

Are you sure you can be bothered to harvest a decent crop ?

 

[Millet]

Have you seen this video clip? (https://youtu.be/Wm7RqXJD4_w?t=23m45s)
By far the best approach is to use young queens from a low-swarming line.

I like that method P thanks for posting the link and jogging my memory and i may give it a go this season if need be..

 

[Eyeman]

Taking the Q out in a nuc works for me. Most of the time!
The tricky bit is managing that 'still bursting at the seams' swarm fevered colony.
I like to remove 3 brood frames/bees and 2-3 frames of stores. The brood frames go into 3 separate 3 frame nucs and the stores are extracted and will be returned to the colony a week later when I re-queen it.
I remove any capped QC's and leave all the unsealed ones and return 1 week later.
I then remove all the queen cells and requeen with a mated queen from one of my nucs.
This appraoch weakens the colony and provides extra laying space for the new queen. Despite all this they may still decide to raise queen cells from the brood of your new queen!!!

 

[domino]

Are you sure you can be bothered to harvest a decent crop ?

I just want to see how much I can make (steal) from my colonies if I focus on it. TBH I'm not a huge fan of honey.

 

[Poly Hive]

Knocking down queen cells is a sure recipe for them to hide one and off they go.

Sorry but to use that System one would indeed need to be mad.

PH

 

[Eyeman]

Knocking down queen cells is a sure recipe for them to hide one and off they go.

Sorry but to use that System one would indeed need to be mad.

PH

There's a lot of mad people out there!
I can see a rational for a one off knocking down of QC's if you've, heaven forbid, inadvertently let the colony get congested. If you relieve that congestion then a one off QC's removal may be effective.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

May being the operative word.

 

[colinc]

Following that advice in Ted Hooper I tried this with my first colony. They swarmed and after I had removed and replaced the tiles on my kitchen roof to retrieve my swarm I returned to the book to figure out what went wrong

Won’t be using that tactic again.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Walrus]

I'm curious about people other experiences of:

a. other methods of swarm control
b. strategies to delay the bees swarming

Thanks

I've been thinking about this too because last year although I did well at preventing swarms I did not do so well with honey production. I bought good queens and requeened most of my colonies last August.

Queens in their first year are much less likely to swarm than older queens, and using queens from non swarmy stock is a big one too. I had a go at writing about the causes of swarming (rather than what to do about it) here

For control, I like the B+ video clip (vertical split) & there are several names/variations of this.

 

[Millet]

There's a lot of mad people out there!
I can see a rational for a one off knocking down of QC's if you've, heaven forbid, inadvertently let the colony get congested. If you relieve that congestion then a one off QC's removal may be effective.

My first angry colony made quite a lot of Queen cells in my first year and they where only on six frames of brood with a super on top with no Queen excluder so they had more than enough room, i did a pagden and they still swarmed into a bait hive i had on a shed roof, two days later they swarmed back into the original hive, obviously those where a swarmy batch.

 

[Beefriendly]

, obviously those where a swarmy batch.

Not really Millet, they just sound typical of many local mongrel bees (area dependent) that swarm at the drop of a hat. And very little you can do to prevent it once they get swarm fever.

 

[madasafish]

Not really Millet, they just sound typical of many local mongrel bees (area dependent) that swarm at the drop of a hat. And very little you can do to prevent it once they get swarm fever.

And these are the bees the BBKA would have us breed from...