swarm control help URGENT

[barry]

Have just checked both of our hives and have a problem with one of them. Hive is full of bees, has brood at all stages although only seen a small patch of eggs, the problem is there are 5 capped queen cells and one uncapped but try as we might we cannot seem to find the queen. What to do now ? The hive also has 2 supers on 1 brood box.

 

[warts]

Hi
In my limited experience, I would say they have swarmed. Proper advice and knowledge, I am certain, will follow shortly. Hold your nerve..(but if possible, get spare kit ready if you have some in case casts leave in the meantime)...

 

[barry]

Don't think they have swarmed as yet, there seems to be the same amount of bees in the hive as a week ago. Think it may just be the weather conditions that are holding them back at the moment.

 

[BKF Admin]

Is the queen clipped?

 

[warts]

good luck with it all...hopefully they have not swarmed yet.

 

[barry]

no, the queen is not clipped .

 

[mandabow]

Have just checked both of our hives and have a problem with one of them. Hive is full of bees, has brood at all stages although only seen a small patch of eggs, the problem is there are 5 capped queen cells and one uncapped but try as we might we cannot seem to find the queen. What to do now ? The hive also has 2 supers on 1 brood box.

is queen marked?.. if not it may be that she is ready for swarm so is thin and more difficult to see. she may have been big so still being whittled down for swarm flyght, presence of eggs is a good sign.

if you have a spare hive :

move hive to 3 meters away and put one of the frames with a swarm cell in a hive in the position of the old hive (marking the queen cell's location onto a piece of paper) and destroy all other queen cells. all the flyers will make their way there... go back in 4 days and destroy all other queen cells.
easy (ISH)

if not

and your other hive is a lot weaker, swap potitions of hives and drip some vanilla essence on the landing board to help improve relations as they swap fliers + sawp a frame of capped brood over.

or
take out majority of the the capped brood and give it to other hive
(or destroy it if you want to knock back verooa)



(if queen is likely to be big even when slimmed down then you could potentially put in qx and let them kill her when she fails to swarm)
or sift her out.

put a ramp put to the entrance of the hive. but leave about a foot gap.

shake all bees onto this ramp.. the ones that can fly will fly across the gap to the hive.. the ones that cant (young nurse bees and queen) will go to the end then dip over and rest on the underside.


collect this mass like it was a swarm, put it in a makeshift skep i've seen a washing basket used.. feed them some sugar water and they will make some comb.. if the one queen cell you left behind fails you can requeen with you old queen in a few weeks when the hive is hopelessly queensless and the swarming instinct has subsided.

or literally sift this cluster through a qx back into the hive and kill the queen.

still only leave one cell and still kill other queen cells in 4 days time. you can always requeen from your other hive so i wouldnt risk a caste


hope this makes sence.. you may be better waiting for someone with more rescent knoweldge than mee, been out of beekeeping 15yrs ideas have changed a wee bit, not that i'm even sure my mentor when with consensus back then.

 

[Poly Hive]

Read this thread.

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=10568

PH

 

[Skyhook]

Quite possible they have swarmed. If it was a big colony, there can look to be as many bees after as before. Whatever you do don't start tearing down queen cells until you've seen HM. If you can't find her theyve swarmed and you need to proceed accordingly, eg reduce to a single cell (or 2 if that's your preference).

 

[dpearce4]

and your other hive is a lot weaker, swap potitions of hives and drip some vanilla essence on the landing board to help improve relations as they swap fliers + sawp a frame of capped brood over.

hi mandabow

can you explain this a bit more please? how does the vanilla essence work? and how does this help the other hive? when also do you do it do you do it in the evening and for how long?

this sounds really interesting

 

[Leigh]

Put a queen excluder under the brood box - this isn't ideal, but will give you a breathing space to sort things out. If they do swarm, the queen shouldn't be able to get through, and the swarm will go back in.

If your other hive is queenright, cut out the queen cells in the swarmy hive. (The reason I mention the other hive is that if your queen has gone in the swarmy hive, at least you will be able to give it some eggs to make a new queen).

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: FIND THE QUEEN! Then try this (copied from another thread of mine): Take the queen and a frame of brood, put her in a nuc box butting up against the side of the hive, give her a few extra bees and some frames (ideally drawn). Whilst she is laying away, go through the main hive and take out any attempts at queen cells, until the colony are utterly queenless and have no chance of making another. Now they will listen. Once they are attentive, put back the queen, bees and the frames of brood she has made from the nuc into the hive (the handy part about this is that you don't lose much laying/brood potential. They seem to be readily accepted and there is no need to fanny about with uniting processes (icing sugar etc)....presumably they all have the same smell?

If you do put a queen excluder underneath, remove it once you have done all the faffing about.

The above is just one method of many, but it seems to work, and the best bit is that you don't end up with a huge gap in bee breeding. The other variation is to let them make their own queen (ideally by finding one good uncapped queen cell and destroying any others that they try to make) and transfer in the brood that the old queen is laying in the nuc. Once your new queen is mated and laying, the nuc bees can bee put back in and the old queen bumped on the head.....or you could leave her to start afresh if you want another colony.

 

[mandabow]

hi mandabow

can you explain this a bit more please? how does the vanilla essence work? and how does this help the other hive? when also do you do it do you do it in the evening and for how long?

this sounds really interesting

from what i remember the basis was/is... it takes a collective decision to swarm.. fliers preped for days to be able to go back into colony and help out.. they don't actually go with the swarm* as it's already imprinted in their minds eye where they live. internal bees chase the queen around to prep her for flying and brief hiatus in laying. stores are built up etc

the youngest nurse bees also stay, but the inbetweeners the ones that can fly but havn't yet as they havn't needed to forrage due to high numbers of flyers are the ones that swarm*..

by swapping places with a weak colony a large number of those that would have been in the swarm are suddenly in a position that they should forrage. the fliers they now have are not prepped to take over any hive duties so the swarm instinct is no longer a unanamous decision, it's become a bit of a flop.

similarly on the origional site (weak hive) the forragers who have been getting ready to take on more internal duties come home to find some of these duties already need doing, and that their number really isn't strong enough to take over all hive dutys if the mid aged bees of this hive decided to up and leave, again the concencus has been lost, there are no queen cells and theres pleanty to do to bring this colony to a state that's able to swarm. by then hopefully the urge has passed... so some carry on forraging, improving the weak hives honey/pollen requirements, and some help out inside improving the colony as a whole.


the vanilla essence just serves to confuzz a bit, mask the different pheramones, the bees comming back from foraging are less likely to reaslie it isn't home + bees in hive won't realise they are new either as it slightly masks the queens pheramone.

like every method it doesnt always work... works best the worse off the other colony is.

used to do it in the middle of the day when most bees are out, pref on a sunny day so more are out (this may just have been for weight of hive and the fact i only helped in the day when my mum was at work)

sometimes when he first started on this method he would leave a queen cell in each hive to let the bees decide if they wanted to take the oppertunity for superceedure (by either killing queen or ripping down cell - never managed true superseedure this method as queens did not smell similar enough). but leaving any Qcells increased frequency of swarming from both hives so he generally didnt bother after the first few yrs.

sometimes if swarming instinct is strong even after ripping down all the cells you just end up with more swarm cells in both hives to deal with!!!


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another thing i rember him doing at least once.. if we couldnt find the queen was to brush bees off comb with best swarm cell on, place it in a brood box above qx and wait till it is covered in nurse bees again, remove the hive from under it to another site (keeping qx on top so queen cant jump back into the new hive.

leave a few days for the flyers of swarming to draw comb ready for emerging queen to lay in the combs around the brood frame + store a bit of honey in.. then do the swap as above between the weak hive and the new colony.

new queen will take a while to lay but will now have younger (tho less in number forragers)

weak hive will have a slightly lesser boost in numbers but none the less some more bees.. (this time only foragers though as any capable of reverting back to houshold duties will have stayed with virgin queen's entourage)


end up with 3 stronger hives (instead of ASing and being stuck with 4 weaker ones) very high sucess of no swarming after this as origional swarm ready hive loose all their flyers. virgin queen gets all she needs to start and the weaker colony gets a bit more productive.

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nb none of these help the weaker colony long term if their queen is weak and not laying sufficiently she may need replacing.. but then if the bees havn't superceeded her she must have some good qualities





hope this helps, plz excuse the typonese

I would imagine with modern methods of experimenting with bees a lot more should be known about all this by now.. the age of bees that swarm etc 15 yrs ago may just have easily been a guestimate, i have no idea how he knew such things.

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*I would imagine with modern methods of experimenting with bees a lot more should be known about all this by now, and this may all have been proved to be wrong.. i.e. the age of bees that swarm etc 15 yrs ago may just have easily been a guestimate, i have no idea how he knew such things!! and do understand how he did. but practically it seemed to work