Operation Snelgrove

[Ceph]

Stacked from bottom up I have; 1 brood box with two frames and queen on from original hive, 3 honey supers (one very heavy, one fairly heavy and one just foundation added yesterday), 1 snelgrove board, 1 brood box (with queen cells) from original hive that will be gettin another honey super the end of the week!!

It's up to my chin already!! Hope I can take some honey off soon!!


I've had queen cells comin out of my ears!! Ive removed a ridicuolous numbers of queen cells, mainly over two/three frames and left two well developed queen cells, that are around 3-4 days old uncapped.

From memory (working from back of hive) I had them on frame 2 and frame 6 and poss on another one, and bits of randoms on frames that had either just been started or were practice queen cups.


A few questions to pick your brains if I may;

1) Do you normally get queen cells on many frames spread across the hive like that or does it indicate that they may have several swarms as they are very strong in numbers?

2) Have you ever had to do up to 3 door changes on a snelgrove or just managed with doing 2 (if 3 how strong was your original hive to create that)

3) In the Artificial Swarm Hive; Have you ever had any nurse bees (i know you shake the bees off but some nurse bees inevitably stay on the frame with the queen and care for the brood) make new queen cells after 'moving home' in the articifial swarm hive?

4) As the original hive is quite full and I need to siphon off the forager bees as they develop, I was wondering if there is any issue with adding a honey super since I think they could draw it out quite quickly giving them something to do and more space i.e. less chance of creating swarms with my Virgin Queen when she arrives and casts after. What do you think?

5) Do you remove the drone cells they build up off the bottom of the frames in the brood box? Wouldnt this be a good varroa control since this is where they come from? The drone cells must mostly fill that bee space below frames.

Thanks in advance!!

 

[drstitson]

"It's up to my chin already!"

ged marshall has some nice pictures of hives with 10 supers on - he uses neighbouring poor colonies as steps to reach the top supers!!!!

 

[Ceph]

Madness!! I thought mine was getting large!!

 

[richardbees]

Ceph,

I made and used a Snelgrove swarm divider twice a few years ago and know how it works...... but I really don't understand how you've already got 3 supers under the swarm board already..

Which part of tropical London are you in? My hive in Balham, South London is still working on it's first super.....

 

[Ceph]

I think I have been lucky with a very strong colony starting the year more than anything, it will make sense (I think) if I tell you the colony history.

It was a June 2010 nuc which I did not feed during the June gap, if you recall the weather was approx 2 weeks late last year.

As a result it was slow to build up at first and I didn't gain any surplus honey when another similar situation nearby resulted in someone I know getting a reasonable harvest, but I think they fed at first.

I left mine to build up and fed lots of sugar syrup in autumn until I swopped onto fondant as I didnt think the water in the syrup would evaporate before it was too cold.

I left a slab of fondant on all winter and did not treat for varroa.

I also felted the gap at the rear of the varroa floor during the heavy snow and icy winds to limit the chill.

When the weather turned good they were already very strong an had an advantage over other hives competing for the same sources I think.

Thats my guess anyway!

How did you get on with your snelgroves?