Swarm supersedure

[Apiglen]

Thinking of better days. and come back to a question that has puzzled me before. The queen gets older and decides to swarm, she leaves when the queen cells are capped, we then go and catch the swarm and put it in a new hive, what then? HM is getting old possibly past her best does a supersedure then take place or what

 

[MuswellMetro]

Thinking of better days. and come back to a question that has puzzled me before. The queen gets older and decides to swarm, she leaves when the queen cells are capped, we then go and catch the swarm and put it in a new hive, what then? HM is getting old possibly past her best does a supersedure then take place or what

short answer yes, they supercede her, but that used to be at 5 years now it tends to be 2 or 3 years

the most recent thing i have learn on the forum from DanBee and others is to rehive the swarm on the old site with the queen cell hive turned and moved 3ft away...to breed your new queen but maintain honey production then pagden swap 3ft the other way after 7 days then combine when the new queen is laying

even london red double decker buses learn things on the forum..

 

[Apiglen]

That makes sense, saves the problem of doubling up every year and keeps a strong hive going.
Thanks

 

[oliver90owner]

Main problem is the breeding stock. Nice quiet docile lines often don't breed true in the following generations (matings with the local mongrels), so a degree of queen selection is a good thing. Far better to have several options available, so if a queen is feisty she can be changed. The two hive set-up is a bit short in this respect.

Unfortunately(?) lots simply replace their queens with more imports on a regular basis, thus exacerbating the problem of not allowing average mongrel to be the norm with docile traits selected from local stock.

Productivity and docility are the driving forces for this, along with the problems of getting queens mated in the UK summers.

Changing the old queen with an already laying replacement saves all the time lost while a new queen is produced by supercedure. Also there is a saving of space and resources with lots of nucs rather than lots of full hive boxes, etc, etc.

 

[drstitson]

As per MM but with the caveat - depends why they swarmed.

If they swarmed because they are being kept in too small a hive format then HM will not necessarily be too old and so supercedure won't happen immediately, maybe at end of season or perhaps after next year's swarm.

 

[itma]

... then pagden swap 3ft the other way after 7 days then combine when the new queen is laying

even london red double decker buses learn things on the forum..

My recent learning is that you can recombine just as soon as you are certain that the new queen is laying healthy *worker* brood. So wait at least (or just) until a decent area has been capped, but there is no need to wait until she has "got into her stride".
As o90o notes, you might want to wait much longer and assess the temperament of her offspring, but that would be at the cost of running two smaller colonies rather than one (with a consequent loss of production).
One safe way would be to "bank" the old queen in a mini-nuc until you are happy with her daughter's performance as queen bee. That should minimise the number of bees taken away from the task of production.