Swarmy Carnolians - Early Demaree - Fix or Folly

[meikle]

I started beekeeping in July 2008 with 2 Nucs from Mike Roberts, each headed by a Carnolian Queen. All went well initially and the colonies increased sufficiently to get through the winter. The early 2009 spring build up started early (for Aberdeenshire!!) but in early May both hives swarmed when there was plenty of space in the brood box and several frames remained unoccupied. As I had no spare hives, the swarms were farmed out to a local very experienced beekeeper, one of which returned to me to replace a colony which was severely depleted by continuous swarming. None of the experienced beekeepers who inherited my many swarms during last summer managed to keep the bees in the box. The final swarm departed in late August whilst on the hill for heather honey.

This year I have decided to be more proactive and today I have carried out a Demaree on a rapidly expanding colony headed by one of the original Carnolian Queens even though there is no evidence of QCs at this stage. No supers have been placed between the brood boxes just the queen excluder as there is no chance of any honey flow here for some weeks yet.

I would be interested in other members experiences of this method.

Richard

 

[trulli1]

Hi Richard,

Was this essentially the method you used as described below:

http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman/demaree.html

Learnt something new today.

 

[meikle]

Yes, this is essentially what I have done except that I didn't wait for QC's to appear as I was advised by a local practitioner of the method that it was best to carry out the Demaree before the bees show signs of swarming. The main difficulty up here is the unpredictable weather may interfere with the subsequent checks for QC's - here's hoping!!

Richard

 

[Do224]

I know this is a very old thread but….is this a viable way of doing the demaree? I thought the whole point is to trick the bees into thinking they have a failing queen, hence the need for supers in between

 

[JamezF]

I know this is a very old thread but….is this a viable way of doing the demaree? I thought the whole point is to trick the bees into thinking they have a failing queen, hence the need for supers in between

My understanding has always been that the point of a Demaree is to separate the flying bees (who instigate the swarming process) from the house bees (who would normally make up the majority of the swarm). Putting a couple of supers between the bottom box (where the foragers tend to stay) and the top box (full of brood and therefore where most of the house bees will prefer to congregate) helps to minimise contact between the two groups. Given that understanding, I can't see that merely putting a QX in and moving all the brood above it would be likely to achieve much. You'd also quite possibly end up with a load of dead drones above the QX unless they were "let out" on a regular basis.

Perhaps giving the bees more space by adding a second brood box well before they might be expected to swarm might reduce the chance of them actually swarming, but it feels like a bit of a gamble to me.

James

 

[Curly green finger's]

Just wondering if you use a demaree board with a second entrance and have the hole in the board only a cm or two would possibly work