Swarm Control

[dafydd]

I am not a very good beekeeper and what seems sensible to me may be ridiculous to a better informed beekeeper so better beekeepers please tell me what you think about the following.

At the end of May my National brood box was bursting with bees and no queen cells. I tried to get them into a brood and a half, a super on top. It didn't work and they later swarmed when I was not at home.
I have been looking for a way to make a swarm go into a hive I have chosen and along the way I read about a system used in Finland for several years, in many colonies,where the queen and drones are unable to leave the brood box during the swarming season because the brood box entrance is closed.A queen excluder is fitted under a super which has an open entrance. Flying bees can either go to the super comb or the brood box. The bottom box is opened every three to four weeks to release drones and allow for queen mating. Swarms are eliminated and no need for inspections. The parts for this process are sold by Modern Beekeeping for polystyrene hives and there is a better explanation of the system there.
This is some of the way to what I hoped for but I thought it should be possible to arrange for a swarm to end up in an adjacent hive.
If I set up three hives with the above opening system, put them side by side with a gap between them and connect each hive to the adjacent one with a length of opaque pipe then the only escape route for a swarming or supersedure queen will be via the pipe into the next hive where she will be trapped again. The queen might be happy in the new hive and her followers may join her forming a new colony which I can move to a new site. If it doesn't produce a new colony the workers should return to the original hive.
When bees are seen at the second hive it would be opened later to allow the queen to fly. It would also opened at regular intervals to release drones and a supersedure queen.
When I first thought of this I wondered about the consequences of having many trapped drones but the research done in Finland shows it has no harmful effects.

Perhaps I would not have to do frequent invasive inspections and could go away knowing I would not return to a half empty hive!

Sent from my iPad

 

[Little John]

I have been looking for a way to make a swarm go into a hive I have chosen ...

... I thought it should be possible to arrange for a swarm to end up in an adjacent hive.

You may find the following thread of interest ?
http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=24559

LJ

 

[dafydd]

Thank you.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I am not a very good beekeeper and what seems sensible to me may be ridiculous to a better informed beekeeper

Join the club butty

I along the way I read about a system used in Finland for several years,

Oh no - is this Finny re-incarnate come back to haunt us all!

I have been looking for a way to make a swarm go into a hive I have chosen and along the way I read about a system used in Finland for several years, in many colonies,where the queen and drones are unable to leave the brood box during the swarming season because the brood box entrance is closed.A queen excluder is fitted under a super which has an open entrance. Flying bees can either go to the super comb or the brood box. The bottom box is opened every three to four weeks to release drones and allow for queen mating. Swarms are eliminated and no need for inspections. The parts for this process are sold by Modern Beekeeping for polystyrene hives and there is a better explanation of the system there.
This is some of the way to what I hoped for but I thought it should be possible to arrange for a swarm to end up in an adjacent hive.
If I set up three hives with the above opening system, put them side by side with a gap between them and connect each hive to the adjacent one with a length of opaque pipe then the only escape route for a swarming or supersedure queen will be via the pipe into the next hive where she will be trapped again. The queen might be happy in the new hive and her followers may join her forming a new colony which I can move to a new site. If it doesn't produce a new colony the workers should return to the original hive.
When bees are seen at the second hive it would be opened later to allow the queen to fly. It would also opened at regular intervals to release drones and a supersedure queen.
When I first thought of this I wondered about the consequences of having many trapped drones but the research done in Finland shows it has no harmful effects.

Sorry Daff, but if it was that good we'd all be doing it - the wheel hasn't changed much in the last 3,000 years - surpirsed if it changes much in the next

Perhaps I would not have to do frequent invasive inspections and could go away knowing I would not return to a half empty hive!
Sent from my iPad

It would be a nice thought - but alas if you want to keep on top of the colony's swarming tendencies, it's 7 day inspections on nothing tubes and trapdoors etc. might look good but.......................

 

[Little John]

Sorry Daff, but if it was that good we'd all be doing it ...

I bet a few people said that to the Wright Brothers too.

Every surgeon under the sun has held the view that operating directly into heart tissue is impossible - until 1996, when a Brazilian surgeon displayed the results of his work.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/14/u...with-heart-failure.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

But even now, the traditionalists are still sticking to their old views.

In comparison with that, I would have thought that the search for a simple method of dealing with swarming is worthy of a few hours further experimentation ?

LJ

 

[oliver90owner]

We already know that young queens, clipped queens, larger boxes and possibly no queen excluder would avoid a lot of swarms issuing because inexperienced beeks don't manage the brood box too well. Maybe the extra, above and beyond those measures, is not really worth a lot of repeating work done a hundred years ago and found to be an unsatisfactory cure for beek inexperience or lack of attention.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

I bet a few people said that to the Wright Brothers too.

Every surgeon under the sun has held the view that operating directly into heart tissue is impossible - until 1996, when a Brazilian surgeon displayed the results of his work.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/14/u...with-heart-failure.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

All well and good - but we are talking about something far more complex here - beekeeping!
Just leaving the drones out once a month sounds a recipe for disaster IMHO - and how do they get back in?

 

[dafydd]

"Just leaving the drones out once a month sounds a recipe for disaster IMHO - and how do they get back in?"

Apparently they don't want to!

Research in Finland with marked drones suggests the majority just fly off and never return home. I suppose they go looking for queens and stay the night.

Interesting how people divide into those who cannot envisage any advantage in experiment and those who recognise that all we know is the result of experiment.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Apparently they don't want to!

Research in Finland with marked drones suggests the majority just fly off and never return home. I suppose they go looking for queens and stay the night.

Yerrrs, right - or maybe they just xhill and die somewhere - a healthy population of drones is needed all the time for 'queen mating' not just released once a month

Interesting how people divide into those who cannot envisage any advantage in experiment and those who recognise that all we know is the result of experiment.

As i said - it's not really experiment but re-hashing of the myriad schemes and ideas tried out in the great early days of experimentation and suck it and see of the late victorian period and the early 20th century:

Maybe the extra, above and beyond those measures, is not really worth a lot of repeating work done a hundred years ago and found to be an unsatisfactory cure for beek inexperience or lack of attention.