encore demaree

[fatshark]

Calum … I expect The DR means one of these:
swbdmesh.jpg

[Calum]

Aha ok, thank you for the clarification! I thought a Taravnov board was meant - Google got me good.....
Yeah. Also trickey in a beehouse, but and excellent option - does the smell of the queen getting thought that grille (on the one pictured) not cause confusion?

[fatshark]

I'm not the right person to answer the question really … however, I have used a Horsley board which has a sort of switchable upper entrance and queen excluder, together with an open mesh area. You can use this to generate a two queen system in which the two colonies are 'connected' via the mesh, so presumably any confusion is limited or irrelevant. Even less use in your bee house I should think as I seem to remember you have to reverse the way the entrance faces on the upper box during manipulations.

[Emma]

Hi Emma
The plan should be to have your bees on a double brood box first
You have to get a snelgrove board on before they make any queen cells
When you begin to see drones wandering around in your hive that should be about the right time
Once they start preparations to swarm it's too late (eggs in queen cups)
(Snelgroves method 2 is what he recommends when queen cells are discovered but I haven't found that reliable)
I couldn't give advice on demarree but it takes more work and in our unreliable weather you can't always do inspections when you need to
All these swarm control methods are aimed at preventing the swarrming impulse
Once they make queen cells you need another plan of action
Hope that makes sense




Shortage of food in spring can make things worse and although chalkbrood is a fungus that is found in the environment the main probllem is mostly beekeeper activity spreading it from one hive to another
So any combs which have been in contact with chalkbrood are contaminated and tend to get put in another hive at some point speading the problem to otherwise healthy bees
If you have a good nectar flow and the bees are drawing wax it's better to sacrifice the contaminated brood in the fire and give the bees a clean hive, new combs and a bit of syrup to help start drawing
Other solutions might work but they haven't for me in the past

I did a demaree a few days ago, wanting to get the brood into a deep box instead of the shallows they ended up in last autumn. I'm now just back from a couple of days away, & the weather's turned: I am _so_ wishing I'd bought time by using a Snelgrove board instead of just a queen excluder! They hadn't started making queen cells - they were just finishing off a beautiful job of expanding into the available space - so I'll be fascinated to see how they've responded to the demaree. (Fascinated, & probably roundly told off for going into the brood nest on a day like this.)
On the chalk brood - I've been thinking about it a lot. I've had less time to post, in fact, because of spending more time cleaning up boxes! I've always been scrupulous about moving equipment between unrelated colonies, but less bothered about re-using boxes from one generation to the next as I A.S. existing colonies. I've changed a lot of brood comb, but rarely a whole nest at a time - it's such an impact in uncertain weather, especially for small colonies.
But most of all, I'm realising I've just always accepted a bit of chalkbrood as a given. My first bees were established colonies with some very black old combs, & I learned to recognise those fungus mummies early on. The bees have always survived, usually thrived... but it would be great to see broodnests completely clear of the stuff.
Except that - where did I hear this one? - there's an idea floating around that a bit of chalkbrood is somehow a bit protective against EFB? Something to do with claiming the niche in the hive ecosystem that EFB would otherwise occupy?
Lovely lovely lovely thought, if it were true...

[The Drone Ranger]

I am not sure that protective thing is right Emma
The theory is is where Chalk is present any stressed / undeweight /underfed/ larva get chalkbrood so dont survive long enough to spread the EFB or whatever
Gavin posted some pics of a major EFB outbreak some years back and those bees were showing lots of chalkbrood in conjunction with EFB (so it didn't make any difference in that case).
When there is Chalk I suspect it means other brood problems take longer to be spotted.

If chalkbrood is around after Spring especially during a flow then the bees might be unhygenic so not good at cleaning the brood nest and would also be susceptible to other brood diseases There a requeen would be established thinking
Mostly though its the combs not the bees that are at fault and spore infected old combs are brought into play as the broodnest expands (Could be boxes they can be steam cleaned or bleached)

I'm sure you can eradicate chalkbrood from your hives over time best of luck with it
DR

[Emma]

Hi DR,
I checked my notes: nothing substantial to back up the chalkbrood-supplants-EFB idea. And that's a strong, clear counter-example you're quoting. Hey ho. It is a _really_ nice idea, but I do like to reality-check.
I doubt I'll eradicate chalkbrood - especially not if it means burning live brood. But I've been doing a bit more scorching & scraping of boxes again these last few days. And next winter maybe I'll get organised enough to dig out that old bottle of acetic acid again. (There are always so many things waiting for "next winter".) Just saw too darn much of the stuff, this spring. Not that it seems to have dampened their spirits much!

[fatshark]

I see that the spammers have trashed recent images:
http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/sh...ll=1#post30464
which is a pity as I was looking for something to copy … on a related point, there's a good account of using these types of split boards here. Which has a reasonably details description of swarm management vertically i.e. under one roof.