Swarm Control without Finding the Queen

Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum

Help Support Beekeeping & Apiculture Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Whilst you are at it ... just check whether any of the queen cells have been vacated because what you assumed was a swarm has all the characteristics of a virgin queen going off on her mating flight so there's a possibility that your original queen HAS swarmed and what you are seeing was the start of a mating flight ... you need to look a bit closer at the queen cells to be sure ...
 
I checked the artificial swarm hive from my recent Wally Shaw modified Snelgrove today and the queen that I located back in that A/S hive on Tuesday was accepted back and laying, hoping yours works out too StephenT.
I will leave the now queenless parent hive for 3 weeks before taking a look.
For me that is two Wally Shaw modified Snelgrove 2’s, they have both had the queen accepted.
Wally Shaw Snelgrove ll (modified) Update- 20 days after switching the queen from the parent colony to the artificial swarm (which accepted the queen back), the parent colony has swarmed. I have got the swarm back, I presume at 20 days & current weather the queen is a virgin
At 20 days past queen removal there shouldn’t be any queen cells left in the parent colony, or could the workers keep a queen in a cell that long past the 14 days?
I will take a look later and release any queens in cells.
If it’s thought to be impossible for any queens to be in cells at day 20 let me know & it will save me disturbing the parent colony.
 
Wally Shaw Snelgrove ll (modified) Update- 20 days after switching the queen from the parent colony to the artificial swarm (which accepted the queen back), the parent colony has swarmed. I have got the swarm back, I presume at 20 days & current weather the queen is a virgin
At 20 days past queen removal there shouldn’t be any queen cells left in the parent colony, or could the workers keep a queen in a cell that long past the 14 days?
I will take a look later and release any queens in cells.
If it’s thought to be impossible for any queens to be in cells at day 20 let me know & it will save me disturbing the parent colony.
Did you reduce the emergency queen cells in the parent colony after you repatriated the queen?
 
Wally has a thing about not reducing Queen Cells - apart from walkaway nucs or nucs frm a Demarree, I always tear the spares down.

By walkaway nuc, do you mean a nuc with brood frames and nurse bees in, but no queen, which has been moved to a stand away from the original location so it contains no foragers, and then creates its own queen cells?
 
By walkaway nuc, do you mean a nuc with brood frames and nurse bees in, but no queen, which has been moved to a stand away from the original location so it contains no foragers, and then creates its own queen cells?
yes
 
Wally has a thing about not reducing Queen Cells - apart from walkaway nucs or nucs frm a Demarree, I always tear the spares down.
So will I in future, I have just released 3 queens from ripe cells in the swarm hive, one is now in a nuc that was queenless, she was accepted OK, so that was a plus.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top