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Thread: Late season swarming

  1. #41

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    could have been worse though Fatshark they might have gone down the chimney

  2. #42
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Hmmm, not so sure … chimney isn't half-filled with drone brood supers. I'm hoping to have cleared these down into a brood box by late Sunday. However, if there's a laying queen in the top somewhere it could prove challenging. Also … I'm not taking the chimney with me when I move.

    Re. the original topic, the blackberry are coming on strong here now and colonies that had QC's a week ago sen to be now mainly focussing on collecting nectar rather than making swarm preparations.

  3. #43

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    Not finding many cells ourselves, but gee its still going strong. TWO massive swarms arrived at home base this weekend, well one massive ( two deeps full of bees ) and the other almost a full Langstroth deep. That makes six large swarms, at home base alone, in the last week, and by now if should have eased off. Free gift of someone else's heather crop.

  4. #44

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    Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post

    The b*ggers totally ignored the poly bait hive that was nearby :rolleye
    Thats highly likely. We only leave wooden bait hives, as for some reason they seem to be greatly preferred by swarms. Poly bait hives have a fairly poor record of taking in swarms so we leave wooden ones instead (when available...not many this year as now no vacancies worth talking about).

  5. #45
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    That's not my experience … I've got the majority of swarms over the last 2-3 years in poly bait hives. Partly this reflects the fact that I've got some poor poly Nationals (MB) I'd rather not use on a daily basis, so I use them as bait hives. Even two poly supers with a correx floor and lid work fine. I don't doubt that cedar boxes end up being more 'bee smelly' but have no qualms about using poly hives. This year and last my first and biggest swarms all chose poly.

    Re. my earlier post #42 … the swarm was a prime and the queen had laid up much of a drawn super frame. However, this was on drone brood foundation and the bees reengineered the majority of the cells to worker size for the queen to lay in. Neat.
    Last edited by fatshark; 13-07-2015 at 10:32 PM. Reason: 'cortex' floor … d'oh

  6. #46

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    Lol....thats one of the beauties of doing bees......so many differences. One of our Scottish bee farmers has had a health crisis in the last few weeks and we went to helpout with some of his bees......and he too was all poly bait hives, stacked between boards as you state, even double or triple story bait hives.

    Our own use of bait hives has declined sharply since the 2009 EFB outbreak, and most apiaries no longer have any bait hives. At home base we do not normally keep any bees and the swarms we get there are incomers to spare gear in the yard, and they rarely choose the poly. You may have a point about the smellyness, as most of the wooden hives are considerably older than any of the poly ones.

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