swarm nuc to snelgrove board

[MandF]

Inspected my larger colony just now, and typically, find a few ripe swarm cells, I would guess to be 6 or 7 days old - I inspected a week ago with no sign.

I say typically because I had ordered a snelgrove board with a view to using it on this hive, but it isnt due to be delivered until tomorrow.

I found the queen on the first frame with a QC, so I decided to do a 'swarm nuc', ie move the queen on the frame she was, destroying that QC into a nuc alongside, along with another brood frame, 2 frames of stores, and on this occasion an empty drawn shallow frame - the idea being I give her some immediate space to continue laying, the nurse bees with her something to do (draw comb under the shallow frame) and hopefully they'll be drones, so I can do a drone sacrifice at some point as a varroa treatment.

Into the main hive I put 2 frames of foundation I had already made up, plus 2 drawn frames I had stored.

So, plan is now to let the main hive raise a new queen, and in the meantime feed it with the foragers from the nuc, as usual. I dont really want an increase, so I will most likely keep the new queen if she is ok.

Now, instead of moving the nuc from side to side, is there any problem transferring the nuc to a brood box when the snelgrove board does arrive, and then doing the usual snelgrove manipulations to move foragers into the main hive? I cant think of any off the top of my head, only difference with a traditional snelgrove is that the bottom hive is the one which will be raising the new queen.

I have worked out on the calendar that I can safely go and check the new queen is mated and laying ok on 8th June, which is approx a week after the mating and starting to lay window. Do I need to try and ensure that the last opening on the snelgrove is round the front, so that when its removed the remaining foragers can more easily find the proper entrance, or in your experience will they find it anyway?

Thanks

 

[Walrus]

Hi MandF,

thought somebody would have answered by now, but fwiw heres my thoughts:

i) maybe they are not swarm cells at all, I suppose best to play safe, but if plenty of space & queen laying maybe they are supercedure? Depends what you mean by "a few".

ii) if they are swarm cells, you need to separate nearly all of the brood from the flying bees so that they behave as if they have swarmed. From the sounds of it you still have brood & flying bees & QCs in the same box, so they could still swarm (cast)

iii) I have attached what I use to help me remember how to use a snelgrove board in the two situations (1) no QCs and (2) QCs. In your case it would be "Method 2" so you can see that you need to do a bit of frame rearranging (get all open QCs in top box with the queen)

iv) personally I wouldn't bother with the snelgrove board in your case. i'd put the queen back in the original box and move the brood frames to another box, then combine later on

Hope that helps, and Im sure if my thinking has been wrong somebody will be along to tell me so!

 

[MandF]

Thanks for the reply!

I guess I should clarify the situation.

The hive, which is a brood & half, is full. Due to the bad weather I quickly added another super over the weekend as when I peeked in the super was full of bees.

So, I was kind of expecting some QC progress when I inspected yesterday, but I was also hoping my snelgrove board would have arrived by then, or the QCs were less far along so I still had a couple of days to do something.

I found the queen on the second deep frame I inspected (currently I have the shallow under the deep in the brood & half), along with a nice juicy, almost capped QC at the bottom of the frame.

I quickly looked through the other deep frames and found 2 more QCs the same - big, at the bottom of frames, and I would estimate a day or 2 from capping.

At this stage I knew I had to do something, so the quickest thing was to move the queen on the brood frame into a nuc (destroying the QC on that frame) and another brood frame, plus a couple of stores etc. I replaced the frames in the main hive, in which I have left the QCs intact, with what brood frames I had available, which was a couple of foundation, and a couple drawn.

So, this isnt an A/S as the queen is now with nurse bees in the nuc, and all the flyers are back in the main hive, with the other nurse bees. Not ideal as it is still pretty full at the moment, but they cant swarm as the queen is gone.

My thinking now is to either move the nuc, with queen still going as insurance, from one side of the hive to the other, once a week, so the new foragers from it drift into the main hive and continue to fill the supers, until June 8th when I will check in on the new queen and see how she is. If she is ok I will zap the old queen and reunite the nuc. Or, when the snelgrove arrives I can put the old queen and the brood into a brood box above, and do the manipulations to also move the foragers into the bottom box, until June 8th, check/zap/unite.

Thanks for the doc you attached, I will have a read as I will now do it the 'proper' way with my second hive which, thankfully, has shown no sign of and QCs as yet!