Weekly Inspections (Why?)

[Karsal]

I've been beekeeping for four years now and have always carried out weekly inspections. Over the past years and listening to a Master Beekeeper it takes a colony at least 24 hours to undo all the messing about inside the hive after we have finished.

Has anyone challenged this weekly routine inspection? and just piled on loads of supers on and waited until the end of the season to see whether the bees have just carried on regardless.

The old gentleman who has been my mentor is quite infirm now and only inspects his colonies infrequently. He still gets loads of honey and yes he does lose the odd swarm or two but his bees come to no harm.

 

[Beefriendly]

I've been beekeeping for four years now and have always carried out weekly inspections. Over the past years and listening to a Master Beekeeper it takes a colony at least 24 hours to undo all the messing about inside the hive after we have finished.

Has anyone challenged this weekly routine inspection?

Humm, what evidence did he give for this 24 hours to undo? I would have to say this is very suspect. Bees just seem to get back onto what they were doing pretty quickly.
Weekly inspection are supposed timing of queen cell development so hopefully you can prevent swarming. This timing is also wrong as 5/6 days from egg "hatching" to queen cell sealing is enough to see a swarm leave.
You need to define loads of honey to know if it really is loads....

 

[pargyle]

I am not religious about weekly inspections but you need to have a good idea about what your bees are likely to be up to .. if I think a hive is looking very full, if the queen is not laying wall to wall or I see them making play cups then I will inspect that hive regularly as it is costly to lose a swarm (or even worse if there are castes). An inspection doesn't always have to be every frame out - you can tell a lot from a quick look.

But ... just leaving them to it and justifying it on the basis that 'it will disturb them' is leave alone beekeeping to all intents and purposes. Lots of people do it but they will lose swarms, you miss signs of disease and you miss building a visual working knowledge of your colonies. My regime is as little interference as possible but I don't just leave them to get on with it ... it's not real beekeeping.

 

[enrico]

Conversely, you could say that instead of checking for desease you could be increasing the possibility of spreading it! There are arguements for most things, just do what you feel is best for you.
E

 

[masterBK]

With clipped queens you can extend the interval to 9 or 10 days during the swarming season . If you use double broods then checking for swarm cells takes less than a minute (and hardly disturbs the colony at all) by splitting and tilting the box to look at the bottoms of the combs for swarm cells in the the top box. Once you get current years queens in then only need to check the brood chamber on an occasional basis.

 

[birdsandbees]

I go by the knowledge of history with each colony, if the hive has a virgin queen or has been knocked back to one cell after an AS then I don't feel that I need to be going in each week until they have had time to re-establish, all I do is assess the Supers and see if I need to add one as without brood to rear the volume of collected nectar/honey increases, I do inspect weekly though as I really don't like losing bees and especially carefully selected queens.

 

[johnogaunt]

Check out the paradise hive swarm trapping system to reduce inspections to 21 days .This can be achieved in nationals by using a queen excluder :entrance block to close main brood chamber and a simple wedge for top entrance. Trapping a queen at artificial swarm means the upper chamber can be used for replacement queen rearing if required and is more reliable than queen clipping where the swarm can return to the clipped queen and take up residence under the hive out of sight.

 

[alfazer]

I often hear about the queen clipping meaning inspection interval can be a few days longer, but I don't really understand why this is.
In my mind, the clipped queen and her flying bees get the impulse to swarm, just the same as an unclipped queen, the only difference is she can just fly a few yards when she leaves the hive. And then the bees abandon her and fly back to the hive.
But why does clipping the queen extend the inspection interval?

 

[For want of a better word]

With clipped queens you can extend the interval to 9 or 10 days during the swarming season . If you use double broods then checking for swarm cells takes less than a minute (and hardly disturbs the colony at all) by splitting and tilting the box to look at the bottoms of the combs for swarm cells in the the top box. Once you get current years queens in then only need to check the brood chamber on an occasional basis.

OR brood and one half!!
Problem is that if you are a sloppy beekeeper and have allowed the bees to use frames that have bits of foundation missing down the sides... then possibly on a quick tilt and look you will miss queen cells... one problem I have stumbled upon with a Flows hive where just a strip of to be waxed is suggested for the bees to build comb on!

Bees swarm... tis in their genes!

Yeghes da

 

[Eyeman]

OR brood and one half!!
Problem is that if you are a sloppy beekeeper and have allowed the bees to use frames that have bits of foundation missing down the sides... then possibly on a quick tilt and look you will miss queen cells... one problem I have stumbled upon with a Flows hive where just a strip of to be waxed is suggested for the bees to build comb on!

Bees swarm... tis in their genes!

Yeghes da

Tilting the top box of a double brood works a treat. Just make sure you leave the queen cups on the bottom of the frames and the queen is clipped. Use enough smoke to clear the seams in the top box and tilt it near 90 degrees so you get plenty of light down those seams. With weekly inspections that gives you 2 chances to spot the queen cell before the virgin takes flight!
Use tilting in conjunction with 'how the colony is behaving on the day' so if there is any doubt that all is not well then take a look at a few frames.

 

[B+.]

And then the bees abandon her and fly back to the hive.
But why does clipping the queen extend the inspection interval?

Not all the bees abandon her. Some will be attracted to her pheromone and find her on the ground. They will stay with her there. I have seen this many times when I crush a queen that I'm replacing. The bees will stay with her dead body as though they can't understand why she doesn't move.
Clipping the queen is quite a risky swarm control strategy. Often it doesn't work because the periods quoted for emergence are only "average" development times (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee_life_cycle). Some virgins may emerge earlier and some may take longer. Weekly inspections are recommended because there is a "fair chance" that a reasonably competent beekeeper can spot a sealed cell (day 8 to day 16). Its only a guide though. It's not a hard-and-fast rule. Beekeepers can be caught out if the bees choose an older larva to build into a queen, or, if they just fail to spot the cell.

 

[Millet]

Not all the bees abandon her. Some will be attracted to her pheromone and find her on the ground. They will stay with her there. I have seen this many times when I crush a queen that I'm replacing. The bees will stay with her dead body as though they can't understand why she doesn't move.
Clipping the queen is quite a risky swarm control strategy. Often it doesn't work because the periods quoted for emergence are only "average" development times (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_bee_life_cycle). Some virgins may emerge earlier and some may take longer. Weekly inspections are recommended because there is a "fair chance" that a reasonably competent beekeeper can spot a sealed cell (day 8 to day 16). Its only a guide though. It's not a hard-and-fast rule. Beekeepers can be caught out if the bees choose an older larva to build into a queen, or, if they just fail to spot the cell.

That is exactly what happened to me last week, i left two Queen cells on the bottom of two frames and removed the other three, however i had mistaken a Queen cell built deep into the middle of another brood frame that to me resembled a capped drone cell as the main part of the Queen cell was surrounded by a uneven built out patch of drone cells.
I ended up with a Virgin in a prime swarm and the two remaining Queens fought it out, if i had not done my inspections god knows what would have happened if all 6 Queen cells had emerged, i would probably be left with a handful of bees i suspect.

 

[Finman]

Not all the bees abandon her. Some will be attracted to her pheromone and find her on the ground. They will stay with her there.

Clipping the queen is quite a risky swarm control strategy. Often it doesn't work because the periods quoted for emergence are only "average" development times.

Basic rule is that bees do not stay with the queen which cannot fly and swarm

Clipping has not swarming risk. Bigger risk us that swarm escaoes when first queen cells gave been capped. It gives couple of days to the beekeeper to do something, like AS. If you do not clip, it is easy to the queen go to the tree top and never come back.

7 day control period is good, because it gives couple of days flexibity for instance for bad weather.
.

 

[user 6228]

Remember to cut your trees shorter than your ladder .

 

[Finman]

Remember to cut your trees shorter than your ladder .

Heh heh heh. I have forgot that!!
Easier to cut wing.

Those trees are 90 years old.

 

[thenovice]

Tilting the top box of a double brood works a treat. Just make sure you leave the queen cups on the bottom of the frames and the queen is clipped. Use enough smoke to clear the seams in the top box and tilt it near 90 degrees so you get plenty of light down those seams. With weekly inspections that gives you 2 chances to spot the queen cell before the virgin takes flight!
Use tilting in conjunction with 'how the colony is behaving on the day' so if there is any doubt that all is not well then take a look at a few frames.

I have seen this done on youtube videos. but how do I do that on a 14X12 with 5 supers on top? I need to take those off anyway so boing in the broodbox does not seem so much more disturbance after that.

 

[Eyeman]

The supers come off before tilting,
I use tilting in my double brood box colonies. My 14x12 I check 3-4 frames which usually gives me an idea what is going on and whether I need to check the rest of the frames or not,

 

[REDWOOD]

All that swarm prevention does is weaken a colony so it is not viable to swarm.
If you reunite after a split it can all start again. I'll keep to my 7 day inspections

 

[lilybetbee]

OR brood and one half!!
Problem is that if you are a sloppy beekeeper and have allowed the bees to use frames that have bits of foundation missing down the sides... then possibly on a quick tilt and look you will miss queen cells... one problem I have stumbled upon with a Flows hive where just a strip of to be waxed is suggested for the bees to build comb on!

Bees swarm... tis in their genes!

Yeghes da

How do you teach your bees to stop taking the foundation out at the sides of frames?

 

[Finman]

How do you teach your bees to stop taking the foundation out at the sides of frames?

You give foundations then when they are willing to draw foundations.
.