Hive will not swarm??

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Mosquito

House Bee
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Messages
263
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0
Location
Crawley, W,Sussex. uk
Hive Type
Commercial
Number of Hives
2
I run a blog with all info on.
I joined my 2 comercial hives up on 24th Apr.
I have 4 supers on.
Brood box and all supers are full of bees.
The Queen is now laying only on 3 frames.
The rest have loads of capped brood.
But it looks like the bees are filling any space up with honey.

But still no Queen Cells?
A few play cups only.
Could it be too hot for bees to make Queen Cells?

I never had bees that don't want to swarm??

Mozzy.
 
If you want swarm cells remove some of the supers to reduce the amount of room the bees have.
 
I did remove the top super.
But had to add another super as the next one was also full.
Got a nice flow on.
So cut them down to 3 supers.
Still no Queen Cells.
Last year same hive and queen and was cutting out around 15 Queen Cells a week in june.
So hope I get a few next week.

Mozzy.
 
You cant have the best of both worlds. They will only start swarm cells if they feel they are short on space. Reduse the supers again and they will probably start Q cells Quicker. If you give them empty supers they get too busy with collecting nectar. Less space gives them less to do they will soon think of swarming.:cheers2:
 
I did remove the top super.
But had to add another super as the next one was also full.
Got a nice flow on.
So cut them down to 3 supers.
Still no Queen Cells.
Last year same hive and queen and was cutting out around 15 Queen Cells a week in june.
So hope I get a few next week.

Mozzy.

Most people will love a hive like this if its increase you want make up a nuc with the queen and providing the hive has eggs you will have plenty of queen cells but I hope you dont live to regret it.
 
I don't have a nuc.
I am thinking of just splitting them next week.
It would force them to make emergency QC.

Mozzy.
 

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