What swarm prevention methods this year?

[Finman]

Morales G 1986 studied “the effects of cavity size on demography of unmanaged colonies of honeybees” & found that supersedure occurred in 50% of colonies in hives with 84 L of space but only 5% of colonies in hives with 21L and with 42L space (these tended to replace their queens by swarming)

84 litre hive is only size of 2 langstroth boxes. A colony must swarm every year in that cavity. Unmanaged colonies are escaped swarms. Varroa has killed fetal bees after 1986.

When I bought mongrel black bee swarms in Finland 50 years ago, very often the swarm superceded the old (laying) queen 1 month after swarming.
Perhaps the queen was from primary swarm of privious year. Impossible to know.

i renew my queens every year. I have very seldom superceding colonies.

 

[Finman]

.
That Morales' swarming thing.

Swarming is the most important thing in honey bees life becaude it is bees habit to propagate. 2 swarms a year, like do mostly Australian wild beehives.

Many beekeepers think that swarming is some kind malfiction of bees, but actually non swarming is malfunction.

 

[curry756]

Thanks guys for all the comments. Interesting reading.

So I am torn between demaree or pagdon. I have 14x12

Demaree - does the top brood gets full of honey during this process? If so what do you do with it?

Pagdon - this doubles the number of hives. When would you reunite? Is honey crop adversely affected?

Thanks in advance

 

[Dusty Rhodes]

Don't forget that with the Demaree method, there should be two supers between the two brood boxes, which attract the stores.

The knack is to remove the top box as soon as the last brood has hatched.

You can give any stores back to the bees after you've harvested the honey, either as frames in the bb or as a nadir if there's a lot.

Dusty.

 

[jd101k2000]

Our association now has full details of the imminent (11 April 2015) presentation by Jenny and Wally Shaw. The details are at: http://www.ec-bka.com/events/event/ecbka-april-2015-meeting-wally-shaw/ - that has location, timetable, everything We have hired the big hall for the talk, as we are hoping for a lot of people.