Q rearing colony making swarm preps

[Eyeman]

I've 3 colonies on double brood ready for their use as queen-right starter finishers. 2 have supers on. Was about to put the plastic queen cells in one of the colonies last night and found swarm preparations in the bottom box with the queen, no queen cells in top box above excluder. So I did an artificial swarm. Unfortunately that rearer colony wasn't the one I was going to use for the grafts.
The question is do others have this problem when building up a strong colony for queen rearing they also show swarm preparation?
I'm going to check my other 2 colonies today, hopefully one will be OK.

 

[jp19sqn]

Hi Eyeman, I use the queen right method. I use a double brood colony and get it booming. Then put 2 supers of drawn comb over the top of a queen excluder. I then check it 2-3 days later for queen cells and take out a few frames of pollen, stores and 2 frames of sealed brood and replace with foundation. I then rebuild, put yet another QE on top then another brood box with those removed frames of brood and stores plus dummies. Works a treat. I then use it for about a month but have to rotate sealed brood up to the top box. I graft 3 times a week in the first week and get huge acceptance rates from the 3rd sequence onwards, then I go into a once a week cycle on that colony once they are in the groove. At the end of the month-6 wks I re-establish the colony to double brood and pick on another booming colony instead. Hope it helps.

 

[Eyeman]

Hi JP...
Can you stop the swarming drive after taking down the queen cells. I think they are more likely to build the QCs in the top brood box after you have put the 2 supers between the 2 brood boxes and taking these QCs down has worked for me. The problem is when they build QC's in the bottom box with the queen: my gut feeling is that if this occurs then I do an AS and abandon it as a rearing colony.
If I understand your technique you add a 3rd brood box with frame of pollen, stores and sealed brood then fill the rest of space with dummies. Without any open brood in the top box where you are going to put your grafts you won't have attracted any nurse bees, so I would have thought the grafts won't get enough attention until your sealed brood emerges.
I agree that moving the box where the grafts are to go further away from the bottom box with the queen does increase acceptance rates at the expense of increased rogue QCs.
Nice idea
Alec

 

[jp19sqn]

I do put a frame of unsealed brood in the top box and move sealed brood there as it becomes available from the bottom box, it gets the top box booming and depletes the bottom boxes. If they start doing queen cells below then it is a high risk strategy sticking with that colony. You can move the cells to another queen right colony set up the same way or just split them as they are on double brood.