One method of dealing with a colony intent on swarming.
Today I came across a strong colony on 10 frames of brood which hadnt built out the foundation in its super and had built queen cells on five of the brood frames - I decided to 'butcher' them:
1.First find the queen ( the gods of beekeeping were smiling on me and I got her on the second from last frame on my first look through the brood box)
2.Take away any frames with sealed queen cells - 5 - with adhering bees and also with a few more shaken in to really cover the frames with bees
3.Go through the remaining frames shaking all the bees off, squishing any queen cells and scraping any capped stores untill the honey's dripping
4.Release the queen back in and re-assemble the hive with the remaining brood alternating with new frames making sure any messy honey/cappings from the brood frames are smeared over the super frames
5.Leave for a week and check to see what theyve done, hoping theyve given up wanting to swarm, cleaned up all the mess, drawn out some foundation and the queens back laying
Today I came across a strong colony on 10 frames of brood which hadnt built out the foundation in its super and had built queen cells on five of the brood frames - I decided to 'butcher' them:
1.First find the queen ( the gods of beekeeping were smiling on me and I got her on the second from last frame on my first look through the brood box)
2.Take away any frames with sealed queen cells - 5 - with adhering bees and also with a few more shaken in to really cover the frames with bees
3.Go through the remaining frames shaking all the bees off, squishing any queen cells and scraping any capped stores untill the honey's dripping
4.Release the queen back in and re-assemble the hive with the remaining brood alternating with new frames making sure any messy honey/cappings from the brood frames are smeared over the super frames
5.Leave for a week and check to see what theyve done, hoping theyve given up wanting to swarm, cleaned up all the mess, drawn out some foundation and the queens back laying