Lost AS

[JohnRoss]

Went to check my bees today and an AS that I had carried out a week ago had gone. from a full box of flying bees they have left behind two frames of brood and a few remaining nurse bees. Workers have drawn out some emergency cells. Will start clipping queens in future.

 

[Arfermo]

Always best to clip.

 

[oliver90owner]

Don't tell me. You didn't complete the A/S. So many think that splitting off the queen, on a frame of brood, to a box filled with foundation on the original site is it done and dusted.

Those 'emergency cells' are not that at all. They are swarm cells.

 

[TOBY-3652]

Went to check my bees today and an AS that I had carried out a week ago had gone. from a full box of flying bees they have left behind two frames of brood and a few remaining nurse bees. Workers have drawn out some emergency cells. Will start clipping queens in future.

I had just the same. put the 2 frames in a swarm that I got.. I put it down 2 experience

 

[Teemore]

Sorry you lost the swarm John.

I tried using conventional A/S as part of swarm management and couldn't get along with it so on recommendation from a long standing beekeeper, I began to remove the laying Q in a Nuc along with a frame or two of bees and brood, leaving a single viable queen cell in the "parent" colony. This works well but necessitates moving Nucs to another apiary and creates additional stocks to inspect....
In preparation for scaling up the amount of queen rearing I do, I have read a fair bit about Wilkinson & Brown's Queen Right Queen rearing method and use of Cloake Boards etc. and as a result of my background reading (this forum included) I have introduced the Demaree method of swarm management into my apiary management and currently prefer it over a conventional A/S.

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Sorry you lost the swarm John.

I tried using conventional A/S as part of swarm management and couldn't get along with it so on recommendation from a long standing beekeeper, I began to remove the laying Q in a Nuc along with a frame or two of bees and brood, leaving a single viable queen cell in the "parent" colony. This works well but necessitates moving Nucs to another apiary and creates additional stocks to inspect....
In preparation for scaling up the amount of queen rearing I do, I have read a fair bit about Wilkinson & Brown's Queen Right Queen rearing method and use of Cloake Boards etc. and as a result of my background reading (this forum included) I have introduced the Demaree method of swarm management into my apiary management and currently prefer it over a conventional A/S.

There's been a thread recently about the loss of yield from the nuc. method. Worth a look. http://beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=29495

 

[Teemore]

Ta - I had been keeping track of that.

As planned, the main thrust of my work this season has been to optimise the number of foraging bees for my main flow, equalizing stocks within apiaries etc. Whilst I had planned to manage apiaries rather than individual stocks, so far I have only needed to deal with swarm preparations in two stocks and my goal there was to ensure the mated queen continued to lay whilst separated from the brood. I had intended to use Demaree in a pro-active fashion but since the majority of my stocks (90%) have yet to show an inclination to swarm so far, I have only Demaree'd in a reactive manner.

Whilst the Nuc method may reduce yield somewhat, it has the added benefit of helping reduce the varroa load in both parent colony and nuc. I think there was some Italian or Swiss research on this subject a few years ago.

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

Whilst the Nuc method may reduce yield somewhat, it has the added benefit of helping reduce the varroa load in both parent colony and nuc. I think there was some Italian or Swiss research on this subject a few years ago.

Interesting; there is certainly a brood break involved. I have been wondering how useful Demaree is for VD; the emerging brood and the brood being sealed can be separated but there is a steady flow of bees and so presumably phoretic mites.