Problems with colonies swarming

[richai1]

Hi, this is my first May with bee keeping and will be coming up to 1 year in June. I am having a few problems with my hives swarming.
I had 2 colonies (out of 2) make it through winter and noticed a few weeks ago a number of queen cells in 1 of them. Performed an artificial swarm - giving me 3 colonies.
Last bank holiday weekend 2 of the colonies swarmed (I am pretty sure it was the originally swarming colony and the split from the colony with the virgin queen|) and I managed to put them back into a full size hive and nuc - so I had 5 colonies. Later that evening the full size (swarm) hive was empty again and so I was back down to 4! Dont ask me what happened to them !

Today noticed another one of the hives swarm and again I have been able to catch them and put them in to a nuc.

So at the moment I have 3 hives and 2 nucs - all with bees but not sure about the queens in each.
I would like to merge the nucs back with the hives so I have 3 full size hives again. I was going to use newspaper and another brood box method and I appreciate I have to identify the queens in each. When can I look to merge back again? How do I know which is the best queen to use? Do I just isolate the weaker queen and kill her?
I think I need to get some expert advice or a mentor to help with swarming in future.

Kind regards

 

[oliver90owner]

Seems as though you need to read up a lot about dealing with swarms.

Uniting parts is possible, as are most things where bees are concerned. Avoiding the need is far easier and a lot more productive. It would appear that you may have a mixture of old queens and un-mnated virgoins - if the weather is not conducive to good mating you may have a recipe for disaster. Finding virgin queens is not that easy either.

I think you need to leave them alone and study the books. Re-unite later when (a) you know exactly what you have in each box and (b) it is safe to do so.

 

[enrico]

Some bees are swarmy and some years bees are swarmy, sometimes you can reduce the risk by not over feeding in spring, by giving plenty of room, by keeping your fingers crossed!
Well done for collecting the swarms, you will be a far better bee keeper for it.
You are doing ok, see how the queens lay, see which are nice to handle, make a choice and combine. We all do it!
Well done again, it becomes disheartening when they keep going! You spend your life waiting for the next one. Artificial swarms don't always reduce the instinct.....good luck
E

 

[RogueDrone]

Check main hive for further queen cells, if confident destroy any found. Leave the Nucs alone for a couple of weeks. By this time your virgin queens should have mated and be laying. After destroying the QC in main hive you may wish to check a week later for futher QCs or if lucky the queen / colony will be getting ready for the honey flow, so give them room.

Colin

 

[Outlander]

As stated above, leave alone for a couple of weeks then see what you have. I know as many others how hard it is to do the right thing when you’re a new to beekeeping. My self and Village Girl came through winter with 4 out of 5 hives. We took on two colonies from a cut out and with AS and splits now have 10. Hope to reduce this back to 6. But so far we appear to have kept in front of them swarming.

I think you need to keep an eye on what’s going on with your colonies and don’t be afraid to make decisions and sort it out ASAP. Lots of good people on her to ask for help and advice.

I made a mistake and did not put fresh comb in with the Q when I did an AS. They went on to build more swarm cells and did not know what to do about this as did not need any more boxes of bees. Decided rightfully or wrongly to shake colony into new hive onto new foundation. I hope this works.

 

[Arfermo]

Somewhere in this thread I think someone should have advised clipping the mated/laying queens as well reading up a whole lot more or, better perhaps, joining a BKA for advice and practical work on swarm control. Clipping is not cruel.

 

[psafloyd]

Mine are REALLY swarmy this year. Hopefully they will settle down when the weather does...

 

[oliver90owner]

Somewhere in this thread I think someone should have advised clipping the mated/laying queens as well reading up a whole lot more

That 'someone' was me. Queen clipping is not particularly part of my beekeeping strategy, but as it would be part of the reading, I did not feel it necessary to be specific or to make sweeping recommendations to the OP which may not be appropriate, or advocate more than is required, especially as he appears not to have a deep understanding of basic bee colony reproduction - and management of same.

 

[Arfermo]

Somewhere in this thread I think someone should have advised clipping the mated/laying queens as well reading up a whole lot more

That 'someone' was me. Queen clipping is not particularly part of my beekeeping strategy, but as it would be part of the reading, I did not feel it necessary to be specific or to make sweeping recommendations to the OP which may not be appropriate, or advocate more than is required, especially as he appears not to have a deep understanding of basic bee colony reproduction - and management of same.

Sorry - no offence intended. Still believe clipping is a basic necessity to control swarming but agree initiator of this thread really does need to bone up in books etc.

 

[Vramin]

Please forgive me if I have mis-understood, but it sounds like he did exactly the right thing - inspected, found queen cells and did artificial swarm. The only thing he doesn't mention is checking for, and destroying all but 1 queen cell in each part, and again a week later, and every week in the queen-right part.
Precisely the same thing happened to me. I did check for, and destroy, queen cells, but must have missed some because both parts of my colony swarmed a week later too, and are now in nucs with undrawn frames. I put queen includers on each for 3 days in the hope of persuading the swarms to stay. When the virgins have mated I will assess their laying and keep the best queens, and unite.

I have done local BKA course, am well-read, have mentor and discussed everything at length with experienced guys. I don't think it's necessarily correct or fair to assume that he/we don't know what we are doing (in theory), just that it takes experience to get it right, particularly when it comes to finding all those damned elusive queen cells! The bees seem to be swarming at the drop of a hat this year.

PS. I was intending to preempt swarming, but my bees were making queen cells earlier than I expected, while they had plenty of room, stores etc, and the weather was still cold and wet. My mentor thinks poor weather and confinement meant the queen couldn't move around freely and that her pheromone wasn't spread around the colony enough and the bees just decided to swarm at the first sign of good weather (well, 5 or 6 days later, after sealing a queen cell, obviously).