1. What's the principal idea that all swarm prevention and control measures rely on?
2.What parts of a colony need to be in place before they swarm and what are methods of swarm control?
3.At what stage of brood development can you diagnose AFB and EFB?
4.How can you prevent and treat Nosema infection?
5.The frequency and time of year for a commonly used bio-technical control of varroa.
6.When is the best time to feed colonies for spring expansion and with what?
7.How often should you inspect a colony in in May and in January?
If any of these could be answered it'd be much appreciated as some of the research isn't entirely clear to me!
You have been offered comprehensive answers to these key questions - but limited to ’conventional ‘ beekeeping in UK, which is well developed but arguably ‘stuck in a rut’ , perhaps due to the fully developed education system of BBKA that is inevitably slow to adapt to new science - and its followers will probably say because it is perfect, so cannot be improved.
However, bkprs do agree that two beekprs will offer 3 answers to every question! So let me offer some thoughts from my position that, while a vertically extending hive is most practical for commercial beekeeping, a ‘horizontal hive’ is easier to manage and so less disruptive for the bees. Horizontal hives such as the nearly million in Ukraine at one time , and the million Layens hives in France/Spain today, did not have supers. (My type of ‘long hive’ does, so is a ‘combination hive’, to use the Victorian description). So there are three conformations of hives in use, and users may answer your questions differently.
You mention ‘research’ but not on what. Assuming it is into beekeeping practices, perhaps as now and perhaps looking futuristically, we need to consider what is best up-to-date practice today. As I am not a scientist I cannot access/understand journal articles so am limited to books. I list some I find most interesting and up-to-date - and would like to compare with your sources for whatever your research is.
Here goes! As BBKA training courses promote the vertical National, the best up-to-date introduction is The BBKA Guide to Beekeeping, 2nd edition 2015. I believe a solid manual is still ‘Guide to Bees & Honey, Ted Hooper , 2008. But science has moved on - and new perspectives reached from research (which you allude to) seem to come mainly from abroad, with the rxception of The BEE: A natural History, Noah Wilson-Rich, 2014, 222pp.
Translated books that I suggest are interesting, but not exclusively, and not yet fully read, include: Bees
1. Honey Bee Biology, Brian Johnson, 2023, 481pp, from USA - this embraces but updates all previous books on biology
2. The Lives of Bees, Tom Seeley, 2019, 353pp, USA - explores how bees live/have lived for millennia, in tree cavities, a completely different shape and character from modern commercial hives.
3. At the Hive Entrance, H Storch, 2010, 68pp, Germany - a very poorly translated list of possible external observations/monitoring of a colony in a hive
4. What the Beekeepers DIDN’T KNOW, Peter Kocalka, 2020, 160pp, Bratislava - what can be monitored using electronic gadgets inserted inside a hive
5. Keeping Bees respectfully …, German - have mislaid my copy - describes a new shape of hive to take taller, narrower frames/combs nearer to a tree cavity
6. Communication between Honeybees, Jurgen Tautz, 2021, 165pp, Germany - how complex methods of communication between bees are
7. Highways and Byways of Beekeeping, Alan Wade, 438pp, 2023, Australia - unread so far but very wide ranging about modern beekeeping.
Turning to your questions, from my position:
1. All life on Earth, including humans, is guided by two instincts: first, to survive, which depends on shelter and food - second, to reproduce, without which the species goes extinct. So swarming is a fundamental instinct that can only be guided, not frustrated.
2. Instinctively, a colony expands in spring as much as food supply allows - when sufficient food has been stored, and the population is large enough to split into two viable units, the instinct to swarm can develop. If weather is unfavourable for swarming, instinct reverses to survival, and queen cells are broken down. (Humans do this - young adults leave the family home and couple up with a stranger to form a new family. That raises children if there is enough money to serve the primary instinct to survive - if not, child rearing is delayed or foregone).
3 - 6 Anserved by others
7. Ideally, a colony should never be inspected - progress should be monitored externally. Opening a hive loses the nest-atmosphere that is full of pheromones which guide bees to where action is necessary - ie feeding/capping grubs , extending comb. The bees are in different groups in different places in the nest - queen attendants, nurse bees, wax makers, comb builders, guards - these all get mixed up if the hive is opened, the pheromones lost, especially if the bees are panicked by smoke they assume to come from a threatening forest fire.
Best to monitor the growth of the colony to a state when swarming is viable - then insert a ‘swarm block’ in the entrance such that the queen cannot join the swarm and it returns. At that state, the beekeepers can open the hive and divide the bees into swarm and parent , relying on to the Taranov principle that at swarming time every bees knows if it is a swarm bee or a parent bee. Just brush off all bees in front of an upturned box,, the swarm goes into the protection of the box and the parent bees fly back. In the eve, run the swarm into the rear part of a horizontal hive, separated by a divider board. When the parent left at the front has raised a new queen - and the swarm has drawn new combs, just remove the divider to unite the two halves. Mother and daughter queens do not fight - this is induced super-cedure. When settled, move the new combs in front of the old brood combs which then become store combs and are removed in autumn - an acceptable second invasion but which does not require lifting out brood frames and losing the atmosphere - the drop of brood cappings onto the varroa bord reveals when the new queen started to lay 3 weeks earlier and by now is fully settled.
Only works with a horizontal or combination hive of course. As I said, they are easier to manage - and better for the bees.
I hope this interests. What are your own views?
