Late season swarming

[alancooper]

I started this thread last year - and thought that an update was needed.

I came through the winter with no losses and strong, low varroa hives (an oxalic acid vapour treatment in Jan may have coincided with a period of few sealed brood). With plenty of hazel and willow pollen in the rural hedges I fed steadily through to April with fondant (longer than usual). By mid May, hives were 5-7 frames sealed brood and bursting with bees. June was spent controlling swarming and gaining arm/back strengthening through lifting heavy supers during inspections. As of this week swarming activity seems to have stopped (fingers crossed). Weekly/fortnightly Varroa counts since Feb have given (from five hives) just an occasional mite dropping from a mesh floor.

What do I conclude? - that my bees are not a late-swarming strain - and that hives with strong local (blackish) genetically heterogeneous bees, well fed for a spring build-up and with low varroa numbers do well and swarm at the normal time of year. I seem to remember my beginners class tutor telling me something similar.

Why the change over previous years? - I guess another year of beek experience has made the difference.

Are there other reasons for the change? - as with all anecdotal stuff, I might just have been lucky in a good spring/earl summer.

[alancooper]

Oooops.... My start thread (Feb 2014)was:

"My bees are "local" (blackish) to Fermanagh and possibly related to local Irish Midland bees (where historically I think Carniolan bees were common). If swarming does occur it happens late in the season (once in early September but normally in August). I do not seem to be troubled with early season swarming (late June-July). My query (as a beekeeper of 6-7 years) is whether late swarming is a feature of bee "type" (ie., genetics) or bee management (eg., slow build-up in the Spring/early Summer) .
Alan

[gavin]

Oooops.... My start thread (Feb 2014)was:

"My bees are "local" (blackish) to Fermanagh and possibly related to local Irish Midland bees (where historically I think Carniolan bees were common). If swarming does occur it happens late in the season (once in early September but normally in August). I do not seem to be troubled with early season swarming (late June-July). My query (as a beekeeper of 6-7 years) is whether late swarming is a feature of bee "type" (ie., genetics) or bee management (eg., slow build-up in the Spring/early Summer) .
Alan

Or both!

Around here (lush mixed arable lowland Eastern Scotland) 'early' (or normal) swarming is in May and June (sometimes April). I thought that I'd got through the season with some colonies not yet attempting to swarm but now I find some of that late season swarming appearing. Well, I'd call it late. I artificially swarmed two colonies at the association apiary today .... and Jon warned me that his colonies often try it in July. I have two of his queens heading full colonies in one apiary of my own and they certainly seem reluctant to swarm early. There is some local native genetics at the association apiary. In contrast Murray said recently that he abandons swarm control and changes the focus of his maintenance around 15th June.

I suspect that I've delayed swarming more than usual this year by the appropriate application of space. In previous years the work-life-beekeeping balance has been a bit wobbly and spring colonies been tight for space.

G.

[The Drone Ranger]

Gavin
are you seeing more yellow /tan abdomens on your bees ?
Not the breeding station ones
The ones down in your own apiaries

[The Drone Ranger]

I think your bees need a stiff talking to!

Odd things do seem to happen one year and not the next - I had one particular year with chalkbrood. Another where queen balling was observed - neither before or since - and one where queens disappeared or just stopped laying. And one year where two queens fainted - to recover.

Hopefully yours will behave next time around.

Hi Adam
I had a queen play possum on me once
I thought "That's torn it she's died" as I watched her drop back into the hive
Closed up - next day she was marching around normally
Had a chalk issue one year
2005 the disappearing queen problem
I Have only ever seen queen balling a couple of times though
I hope my queen replacement plan doesn't take me from the frying pan to the fire

[gavin]

I hope my queen replacement plan doesn't take me from the frying pan to the fire

In my experience it often does, one way or another .

[gavin]

Gavin
are you seeing more yellow /tan abdomens on your bees ?
Not the breeding station ones
The ones down in your own apiaries

Yes I am. No progeny to speak of at the association apiary yet but at my site in the central Carse of Gowrie, despite flooding the apiary with darkish drones, the first queens produced 25% to 50% stripey progeny. Someone nearby has a lot of high-maintenance non-native stock.

[Calluna4u]

[QUOTE=gavin;307In contrast Murray said recently that he abandons swarm control and changes the focus of his maintenance around 15th June.
[/QUOTE]

Not as simple as that Gavin. Its a strategy to produce maximum bee peak for the first half of August. We start a rolling run of giving the queen unlimited space around then, but it takes the rest of the month to complete with the numbers involved. Adding a second deep to anything with brood in 7 bars or more, removal of the excluders and giving the queen a free run has the side effect of removing swarm pressure. It does NOT kill it off completely as a few are just going tobe naturally swarmy anyway. Not enough to make swarm control a viable activity however. Have had the largest number of later swarms arriving at home base (thus not our own as no bees nearby) for many years. 18 and counting, and the last two could not be contained in a single deep box, either Smith or Langstroth. Thus this is year in which many not using a swarm ending strategy will need to be vigilant.

We are on our last run round now in the run in to the main migration (starts tomorrow and runs for two and a half weeks) and are now seeing most parent hives at 10 to 18 bars of brood, and growing, which bodes very well for the heather. About one per site is still messing about with cells (so 3 to 5%). The splits are now mostly up on to doubles now as well, so almost 90% of ours will be headed for the moors as doubles or triples. Its the laying space that makes the heather bees, and coincidentally stops most of the swarming.

Which brings you back to the idea of swarmy and non swarmy bees. Much of swarming is beekeeper caused. Lack of brood space, lack of storage space, lack of attention. Congestion is top trigger. Avoid that and you will find that many so called swarmy bees are a lot less so.

Heather swarming often has other triggers however. Rough handling, bumpy tracks, large colonies, confined spaces. Emergency cells due to loss of the queen in migration for whatever reason are not at all uncommon, and a large colony WILL throw a swarm or two when they hatch. More common though is the same old chestnut. Lack of attentiveness in adding extra space. The old fashioned way of cramping bees to force them to produce comb honey, especially on starter strips or sections, gives rise to very high levels of heather swarming.

None of this is a bee type debate. These thing apply pretty well across the board.

[The Drone Ranger]

Or both!

Around here (lush mixed arable lowland Eastern Scotland) 'early' (or normal) swarming is in May and June (sometimes April). I thought that I'd got through the season with some colonies not yet attempting to swarm but now I find some of that late season swarming appearing. Well, I'd call it late. I artificially swarmed two colonies at the association apiary today .... and Jon warned me that his colonies often try it in July. I have two of his queens heading full colonies in one apiary of my own and they certainly seem reluctant to swarm early. There is some local native genetics at the association apiary. In contrast Murray said recently that he abandons swarm control and changes the focus of his maintenance around 15th June.

I suspect that I've delayed swarming more than usual this year by the appropriate application of space. In previous years the work-life-beekeeping balance has been a bit wobbly and spring colonies been tight for space.

G.

Hi Gavin
I have one of Jon's as well and they started more slowly than most of my others but have made a pretty big strong colony now
My own hybrid/Bitsa's are bigger early which is needed for the rape so by the end of May its peak for swarming season
I would bank on Jon's for the heather though with a lot less work on the swarm control front in May/June
They were overwintered so that's the first season I wonder what they will do next year
Calluna's post was interesting to see how a big operation can plan to minimise swarming
If you can keep the same basic stock you can predict when you need to have things done ie swarm boards etc
You can see by the difference in the way Jon's queens lay, that the bees you have alter the way they need to be managed
I wasn't sure if it was normal or just this one queen (which I borrowed for research purposes lol! from WJ )
I would recommend Jon's queens to any beekeeper and especially folk new to the hobby

I thought I had a fair lot of drones as well but yellow bums are back in numbers
I don't mind, but it's a puzzle because the bees have been going in the opposite direction for a few seasons
You have to get that Bee Breeding station working flat out

[fatshark]

Well … it's official, they're still swarming in Warwickshire. I rearranged a big* pile of unused supers and broods last night in preparation for moving house and a swarm moved in this afternoon. Of the various stacks they chose the one with a finger-width crack (which I missed in the gloaming when moving them) and are now distributed in a shoulder height pile of boxes, some of which have frames in.

2015-07-10 17.54.19.jpg

The b*ggers totally ignored the poly bait hive that was nearby

* 'big' relative to the small-scale amateur beekeeper, rather than calluna4u's definition of a 'big' pile of boxes which is about the size of the Cairngorms.