no sign of swarming yet.

[biglongdarren]

Hey all i have a friend who has 15 hives in two different parts of the county here and not one of them have made any signs of wanting to swarm yet, he has kept bees for over 40 years and has always had swarm cells before this time of year.
They all have roughly a super each on with queen excluder.
my bees are only 10 miles up the road all all but one have made preparations to swarm.

any ideas?

Darren

 

[Stiffy]

Most of mine have looked to swarm but my best queens have not looked to swarm and one is now nearly 3 years old. These colonies have between 3-5 full supers and I will probably be looking to put on more at weekend and are not near OSR. I take my grafts from these queens and manage to get one possibly two each year that keep the same traits ie easy to handle, low swarming and good production qualities.
S


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[jd101k2000]

Well, my two hives are next to each other... both dark queens of Welsh origin. One was a new queen last year (I received the nuc in June). Has produced so many swarm cells that I now have 4 good nuclei and one that might struggle.
The other was requeened at the end of last season... apart from a few play cups... nothing.

Both are really good tempered, etc.
I think that swarmy queen has even better varroa resistance than the non-swarmy queen.

You never can tell with bees.

 

[Pete D]

Hey all i have a friend who has 15 hives in two different parts of the county here and not one of them have made any signs of wanting to swarm yet, he has kept bees for over 40 years and has always had swarm cells before this time of year.
They all have roughly a super each on with queen excluder.


any ideas?

Darren

Seem to be very slow build up hives, dont know what brood box he is running but I think most hives that over wintered and built up would have more than one super by now. Varroa ? Nosema ?

I have also seen some over wintered nucs for sale recently...........I over wintered some nucs which have yielded honey already with 3 supers on, hardly a nuc any more. Certainly in this part of the country we had a mild winter and a real rapid increase in colony sizes through March and April.

 

[Teemore]

G'day Darren,
I was about to say that less than 20% of my stocks have needed swarm control so far but I then thought, hold on, you have been managing them all season with a view to reducing the inclination to swarm.....

Four stocks began to make queen cells which prompted reactive swarm management, a couple were proactively demareed as they were very strong (14x12BB plus Std National BB plus four supers) and some couple are being used for queen rearing and are being disturbed so often they seem to be put off swarming!!

What I have noticed in many of my stocks (and in those belonging to a few other beekeepers I help out) is that over the past few weeks, many colonies have trimmed back areas of comb in preparation for making queen cells. These "hollows" are really obvious when they first appear and at the next inspection there is usually a play cup or two in or above the hollows. What I have also seen is that colonies have started Queen cells and torn them down again. I also had a cell started colony tear down 16 nice queen cells (I discovered this when I went to put on the queen cell protectors...). This activity has coincided with a change in the weather and the onset of the June gap. Since I started beekeeping in 2010, my bees haven't suffered from any obvious June gap so this is a new experience for me and it is interesting to see how the various colonies react to changes in their environment.
The colonies you mention do seem to be a little slow to build up but I have a few comparable stocks which have really just filled out their first super but are going to be spot on for any nectar flow we get in June/July. They are just later developers.