Introducing new queen & shook swarm?

[Erichalfbee]

You shake the bees from one colony and distribute the brood amongst the others. Do one at a time till all are done.......
Not on the same day of course

 

[Madge]

Thanks E.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Make sure there are no disease problems.

Then do shook swarms to the strongest colonies and adding their frames of brood to the weaker colonies, separated by an excluder, remove these combs when all the brood has emerged, keep all the good combs, discard any old manky combs, this also gives the weaker colonies a good boost in bee numbers ready for them to be shook swarmed as well, and then their brood added to the next batch of bees to be shook swarmed, maybe more than one box of brood per colony on some.

The bees that have been shook swarmed can now be given a quick treatment to get rid of any phoretic mites, the last colonies which will be very strong can be given an A/S and the broodless part with the queen treated and the brood part left to raise a virgin queen, all the brood will of emerged before also treating, remove virgin and re-unite, add new mated queen or allow virgin to mate, or split into nucs, several options really, and plenty of good spare brood combs saved from destruction, plus all the brood.

There are a few little finer details that can be done like adding one frame of open brood to the A/S and sacrificing this instead of allowing a virgin to emerge or adding cells, etc, but i don't need to go into all of this.

Here is another old thread on shook swarms...bit of background static in this thread...http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=16518

 

[Madge]

Thanks also, H

 

[Erichalfbee]

Thanks HM
Much much better than my reply which was woefully short of detail.

 

[Jimmys Mum]

Thanks from me too HM, I will give that a try this spring.

 

[Erichalfbee]

******

 

[mbc]

It is certainly a good opportunity to requeen, whatever you do. Bees without brood or their old queen will readily accept a new queen.

While this is true, it's also true that shook swarmed queens often supersede later on. I would put this down to the stress of 're building a brood nest being very taxing on queens, so it may be a better use of resources to let the old queen 're establish the nest and then to requeen once she's spent.

The whole idea of discarding brood makes me shudder, they put their all into raising those slabs of brood.