There’s one way to find out.
Perhaps it should be "Taking the sting out of a Beekeeping forum!"
For sure! But there is obvious utility in finding out first if others have tried it before and have conclusive results.
I've only used it a few times to change the genetics and they didn't swarm later on. My queens usually last between 3 to 4 years, then I requeen them. But my first attempt at supersedure requeening was unsuccessful.
Can I just get clarification please: Later-on, they didn't swarm? Or their swarming was no later than usual?
They didn't swarm at all that season. I mark all of my queens, so I know what is happening inside the hive.
Well that is super interesting. I know its a small sample-size, but I thought if it had an effect it would be that they swarm later rather than not-at-all. Thank you.
I was under the impression that it is not the queen who "decides" to swarm anyhow, but the colony at-large who respond to various conditions including strength and distribution of queen pheromones (mandibular and tarsal) and brood (Juvenile ie Ocimene, vs the older brood blend) and will then prep the queen according to their needs: Lots of jelly for egg-laying, latest Hollywood diet for swarming.
We are half way through August, there is still plenty of time. Alternatively make an extra nuc, then in March go into the veil-banger hive, find and kill the queen, then straight away add the nuc. This was something that Peter Little would do. Or the Brother Adam method, cage a laying queen and add her to a hive that has been dequeened a few minutes before. She will be accepted within a few hours of introduction, this is also practiced by Michael Palmer. A queen that is laying and has completed a few cycles and not a bought in queen.
Yes ... that's true ...it's not the queen who dictates swarming - the committee ... but, in the vernacular, there is the myth that first year queens don't swarm (perhaps if I inferred that it is the queen's decision it was my poor use of English). You only have to ask a few on here who have had new queens in nucs swarm on occasions to know that this rule does not hold true ... another beekeeping myth !
Yeah I have no doubt that there are plenty of such myths and I will likely fall foul of a few on my journey. The one thing that I do keep in mind including with questions like the one I posed here, is that it's rarely a yes/no thing but more often a game of averages and even then, dependent on circumstantial factors that we may not be aware-of or able to control.
Yes ... if you are being generous .... but a lot of the time it might be 50% on a good year with my bees in my part of the world ... but not every year (but we will keep the failures a bit quiet
)
Well it's only a myth if it's couched in terms of an absolute rule. It's fairly sound that young queens are less likely to swarm than older ones - unless of course you have a swarmy strain in which case it's a free for all.
“Only the Sith deal in absolutes”
The density of bees in the area is another factor often overlooked, like ourselves, if there's jostling for space or not enough forage to go around, it's time to move on.
Yeah, even if they seem to have plenty of space overall, I believe the brood box can become overcrowded with young nurse bees for the amount of brood. There may be room where they could go, but they don’t.
Meh, if everything else is good, space etc, then surely both are gonna be regulated by the balance of pheromones, in particular brood, juvenile and Queen.
What pheromones are prevalent when and how they all work is new to me and I am still getting my head around it so I am not confident in my assessment at-all even within what is known to science.
WAIT, so you are saying this is actually something that is done on a mass scale?? How am I only now hearing this?
