Queen excluders & lower entrance colonies

[Beecarer]

What is the annual honey yield in those hives?
.

A good question if I'm chatting to him again Ill ask.

 

[Beecarer]

No and no plans too.
I agree completely with JBM's criticisms of it.
Anyway, if you do a Pagden AS keeping just the one frame with the queen on in the new box you get a whole box of new frames and you keep the brood

We did a few of them when the queen cells appeared and they worked out really well. Won't be going near the shook swarm now or doing the bailey again.

It's good to talk

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

We did a few of them when the queen cells appeared

Why not just A/S them?

 

[Beecarer]

Why not just A/S them?

The hives we did the bailey frame change on were not making queen cells. They were just colonies on very old frames and we wanted to change them, are you saying to do an artificial swarm and force the hive into producing queen cells?

Not sure if you heard but we had a problem over here with an outbreak of AFB

http://www.ubka.org/latest-news/american-foul-brood-outbreaks-in-northern-ireland-2015/


It turned out that the most likely source of the outbreak was people using old stored comb in bait hives to capture swarms or making up nucs and AS's. Haven't really heard anything else about it but would make you think twice about using old comb that's not being presently cleaned by the bees.

http://nihbs.org/bee-inspections-northern-ireland/

 

[Finman]

The hives we did the bailey frame change on were not making queen cells. They were just colonies on very old frames and we wanted to change them, are you saying to do an artificial swarm and force the hive into producing queen cells?

Not sure if you heard but we had a problem over here with an outbreak of AFB

http://www.ubka.org/latest-news/american-foul-brood-outbreaks-in-northern-ireland-2015/


It turned out that the most likely source of the outbreak was people using old stored comb in bait hives to capture swarms or making up nucs and AS's. Haven't really heard anything else about it but would make you think twice about using old comb that's not being presently cleaned by the bees.

http://nihbs.org/bee-inspections-northern-ireland/

AFB does not arise from old combs. Most likely guys do not know, what they are talking.

It comes from another sick hive. You may have totally new combs, and the hive gets the disease as well as old comb hive.

If AFB burstes on area, feral and wild colonies get it too. When colonies die, other hives can rob the remaining stores and get the disease.

.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

We did a few of them when the queen cells appeared

Why not just A/S them?

The hives we did the bailey frame change on were not making queen cells.

Now I am confused

 

[BeeJayBee]

Well that was an interesting read to say the least, apologies to Lesley Bailey if the method described by Dave Cushman is as Lesley would have instructed initially, does anyone have his original writings to clarify? How such basic instructions got misinterpreted is amazing really ....

.....The beekeeper advising me to do this was very 'experienced' in the world of beekeeping. I myself am very new but watching bees bouncing off their front door for days on end stressed me out so cant imagine how they would be feeling, probably feeling similar to the kind of head you get off a bottle of poitín the next morning, hence why I though of taking away the hive stand to help them, no one wants that kind of banging headache!...

sounds nothing at all like a Bailey change to me

It is described as the original method of bailey comb change to me.

It looks like a Bailey comb change for Nosema to me!

With N apis they need to be on clean comb as soon as possible, but if they are weakened they probably won't cope well with a shook swarm. Using a new entrance above the old comb is meant to stop the bees walking over the old stained frames and to help stop them moving spores upwards.

I've done Bailey comb change, to get a healthy colony onto a complete set of new frames. I used Dave Cushman's method. It works. With both methods I think it's important to take out the frames of stores so the bees focus on drawing out new comb in the top box.

I have used shook swarm to get bees onto new comb, it's over and done with much quicker than the Bailey. Just remember to feed the colony until they've got the comb drawn.

I know some beekeepers who shook swarm their bees routinely as soon as they see swarm cells, they say that at that point the colony is geared up for making a new brood nest. They feed the colony until they've drawn the comb. These people wouldn't do something like this if it affected their honey yield.