Supercedure and swarm cells at the same time

[user 20297]

Give RAB time ... he's not dipped in since 10.00am this morning but if you really want to know why not drop him a nice PM - He's normally very helpful when you approach him with the right attitude. His bark is worse than his bite ...but he's usually right.

Before you do perhaps look up Demaree ....

Unbelievable! What has this man done to achieve such adulation and reverence? "Drop him a nice PM......approach him with the right attitude"???????
Would I bow or genuflect in his presence? What would be the correct form of address..."Sir", "Your highness."

Can't you see that the tone and negativity of his responses on this forum is very off-putting to anyone who knows nothing of his saintly and mystical status.

 

[RichardK]

'Splitting' right left and centre is the lazy beekeeper's method of avoiding swarms, it has it's place occasionally but can hardly be described as colony management all these people are doing is dividing the colony up into smaller colonies which have to work to rebuild again jeopardising any honey crop and almost ensuring you have weak hives goinbg into winter - but it seems to be the way many LBKA's prefer, no wonder the BBKA annual honey yield figure is so pitiful. There are plenty of proactive and reactive methods out there. Demarree being one good proactive system and Pagden being the reactive one used by many.

That helps position things for me - thanks.

In the situation that someone wants to remove a possible swarming situation & increase colonies what's a good way forward?

I'm getting the impression that splits are fround upon & am guessing therefore that recommended advice would be to either breed a new queen or buy one in in order that the new colony is up & running quicker?

I'm only guessing here as really I know very little.....I'm not even a 2 month long bee keeper as yet!

 

[Boston Bees]

Unbelievable! What has this man done to achieve such adulation and reverence? "Drop him a nice PM......approach him with the right attitude"???????
Would I bow or genuflect in his presence? What would be the correct form of address..."Sir", "Your highness."

Can't you see that the tone and negativity of his responses on this forum is very off-putting to anyone who knows nothing of his saintly and mystical status.

Sadly you are running up against the forum clique.

 

[Erichalfbee]

That helps position things for me - thanks.

In the situation that someone wants to remove a possible swarming situation & increase colonies what's a good way forward?

I'm getting the impression that splits are fround upon & am guessing therefore that recommended advice would be to either breed a new queen or buy one in in order that the new colony is up & running quicker?

I'm only guessing here as really I know very little.....I'm not even a 2 month long bee keeper as yet!

The easiest reactive method is to nuc the queen when you have queen cells. That way you remove the wherewithal to swarm and keep the original queen as insurance should your split queen not mate.
A simple Demaree where you remove the top box as a new colony is a good proactive method.

 

[user 20297]

I think that most of us had already got the message that you can't necessarily identify the type of QC from its position on the comb. It's also easy to grasp the fact that when multiple QCs appear during the build-up season, the assumption should more likely be that these are swarm cells.

Whilst it seems that supersedure cells may be more likely to appear later in the year, when they are likely to be present in relatively smaller numbers, the problem for any beekeeper will be at the cusp of these two periods or when there is an anomalous occurence either with swarming late or superceding early.

We know what happens when you mistakenly treat swarm cells as supercedure; what would happen if you isolated a queen as if about to swarm when she was actually about to be superseded?

 

[StephenT]

I’ve been splitting too much this year for reactive swarm control and erring on the side of caution when it comes to supersedure v swarm cells. planned to Demaree but missed the chance on all three hives by the beginning of April. Super fast build up in March for us this year (my 3rd season) and simply wasn’t proactive enough. Need to work on this. Some (I assume) good pre-emptive swarm methods in this publication.
https://wbka.com/wp-content/uploads...to-Swarm-Control-2nd-edition-updatedJan21.pdf

 

[Erichalfbee]

We know what happens when you mistakenly treat swarm cells as supercedure; what would happen if you isolated a queen as if about to swarm when she was actually about to be superseded?

The bees in her isolation would try again

 

[user 20297]

The bees in her isolation would try again

Excellent, so not really any harm done other than possibly too few bees to make the best new queen in the split and the original colony loses the possible benefit of a seamless and uninterrupted takeover by the supersedure queen.

I suppose you would just re-unite the split bees anyway?

 

[masterBK]

I find that supersedure cells are more or less all of the same age whereas swarm cells tend to be at different stages of development. Having said that, I find in my colonies they tend to only produce one or two supersedure cells and rarely more than four (although you can get 4 or 5 in Demaree tops but that is a special case) .

I also find that that spring supersedures usually leads to the death of the mother queen very soon after the emergence of the virgin Q whereas with late summer/early autumn supersedures mum and daughter often co-exist for quite a while with both laying with two distinct laying patterns (with mother "disappearing" over winter sometime before the first spring inspection). Unlike JMB, I find the majority of supersedure cells in my colonies tend to be on the face of the comb, rarely on the sides and, so far, I have yet to find them on the bottom of the comb although I'm sure it does happen. Maybe what I have observed over many years only applies to my bees.

Even though I positively select for supersedure as a trait, it still only occurs in a minority of my colonies with typically 3 or 4 colonies trying/superseding out of 25 in any one year mostly in late summer). I find spring supersedures less common these days (although have had a few in June this year after poor May matings) but in the past they seemed linked to colonies dwindling with Nosema. I think that if you find several queen cells (and you are sure they are not emergency cells) , you should first consider them to be "swarm preps" and if lucky enough to find/see the queen then you might notice she looks smaller/thinner than usual as she is being slimmed down ready for swarming and those with a keen eye may even note the drop in egg laying on combs of emerging brood where the queen has not laid or has laid in only a few of the recently emerged cells.

.

 

[jeff33]

It may need tweaking

in welsh?

 

[pargyle]

Unbelievable! What has this man done to achieve such adulation and reverence? "Drop him a nice PM......approach him with the right attitude"???????
Would I bow or genuflect in his presence? What would be the correct form of address..."Sir", "Your highness."

Can't you see that the tone and negativity of his responses on this forum is very off-putting to anyone who knows nothing of his saintly and mystical status.

Frankly, he's done a lot for me personally .... in my early years of beekeeping he was very helptful and since then I see the wisdom in his posts ... his advice (public and private) was always spot on but he never spoon feeds - he makes you think and in beekeeping, if you don't learn to think about your bees and what they are doing then there are always going to be disasters around the corner.

We are all different in the way we present things on the forum ... it's the nature of a forum - we are not all fluffy bunnies pandering to people who are lightly offended and you have to live with that if you are going to participate, I've found, however, that polite PM's to those with a more forthright manner usually portray a slightly less forthright reply ... you should try it.

Your post above is offensive - I never suggested that RAB needs any sort of accolade or adulation - he's just very helpful if you have something you can't figure out and if you don't like public posting then a PM (certainly in my experience) has always elicited a prompt and thoughtful reply.

If people feel there is a clique in this forum I rather fear they are wrong ... long term members who know each other's ways - perhaps - but there's no 'clique' as far as I can see. We all have out opinions, foibles and trigger points.

 

[pargyle]

Sadly you are running up against the forum clique.

Post #51

 

[user 20297]

- we are not all fluffy bunnies pandering to people who are lightly offended

Your post above is offensive -

Who's the "fluffy bunny" now?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

We know what happens when you mistakenly treat swarm cells as supercedure; what would happen if you isolated a queen as if about to swarm when she was actually about to be superseded?

Simple really - that's why putting her into a nuc with some emerging brood and a good shake of workers is a good idea.
a)If it was swarming, you've avoided that and you still have a strong colony to forage (albeit one waiting for a new queen to emerge/mate)
If it was supersedure, they will carry on to replace her in the nuc so you now have a strong colony as a) but also a nuc with a QC waiting to emerge and mate - so a chance to make increase

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

in welsh?

effallai

 

[pargyle]

Who's the "fluffy bunny" now?

I'm not taking offence...what J said was your post was offensive ...there's a difference. Anyway, I don't intend to bandy any more words over this ... you can either value RAB's posts for their content or ignore them for their delivery ... your choice.

 

[user 819]

The ' clique' as I see it, is a healthy respect from regular posters who see common sense and some pretty good advice that is handed out. What ever the manner/tone the post is delivered or received in is irrelevant if it is an honest reply.

 

[OH honey]

An egg remains an egg for three days; on the fourth it hatches to become a larvae. Do you mean the bees took a three-day old larvae?

I

This thread only goes to reinforce the inadequacy of making simple splits.

As I have written in a recent thread, how many bee farmers do you know that make increase in this manner? They do not follow this, frankly, stupid (but simple) procedure. There is, of course, a good reason for that. They KNOW that walk-away splits are far from the best way to increase colony numbers.

Why do beginners (and some not-so-much beginners) follow this path? Laziness, non-understanding of beekeeping, thinking it is *****-proof, don’t know any better, following the “advice” of another beekeeper of similar status, or some other reason?

Some are even known to make multiple splits from a single colony in this way. The one single thing that is clearly obvious, is that what all these people don’t do, is give much thought to their beekeeping.

I could expect this from some beekeepers with double brooded colonies. Just separate the two boxes - the queen will be in one of them. Not really that clever.

Perhaps replies to all those coming on here with problems after making walk-away splits should simply be told of their folly and to sort it out themselves.

So, a Mardy , unhelpful , negative, arrogant post. My hive was full of brood and a second super had gone on. I split by putting half the brood in to a new box and placed over the first with a queen excluder. After a day it was full of bees, so I removed it to make a new colony. The original hive, with queen has now drawn out the comb in second box and has filled it with nectar already. New hive is making emergency queens. how about making constructive suggestions for alternatives. I'll get back to you if/when the actions I have taken are successful or otherwise.

 

[Erichalfbee]

A better course of action, as you had supers on, would have been to Demaree then take the top box off with a decent queen cell.
Now that you have emergency queen cells at least you can destroy all but one of the youngest.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

A better course of action, as you had supers on, would have been to Demaree then take the top box off with a decent queen cell.

And a much wiser move.
Seems the OP just went and did whatever he wanted anyway, regardless of advice.