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Thread: Will your bees attempt to swarm in May

  1. #131
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mellifera Crofter View Post
    Do you put the queen in a nuc made up as usual with three frames of brood, Gavin? Or do you leave her with fewer, or no, brood frames and a lot of house bees? Or something else? And, I suppose, move her to another apiary?
    Kitta
    Hi Kitta

    Usually one frame of brood (minus queen cells, plus the queen), one frame with stores and perhaps a frame or two frames of bees shaken in, plus four frames which are usually a mix of foundation and comb, the comb going next to the bees. Some years and in some locations you end up feeding them a little, weekly, in other years (like this one so far!) they build quickly and will fill a brood box by heather time. I don't shut them in or move them away, the presence of the queen holds most of them.

    This gives me a simple means of swarm control, no heavy lifting of extra boxes, stability for 9 days or so if only an open queen cell is left in the main box (the nuc seldom tries to swarm though a couple have this year), leaves a strong unit capable of gathering honey through the rest of the season, and, crucially, fits my lazy/disorganised/too busy winter lifestyle when I never seem to get around to making those split boards fatshark now uses! (Maybe next year, though I still worry about the back).

    G.

  2. #132
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post
    Nice swarm - as defined by the fact they're calm and already piling in the pollen - arrived in a bait hive today
    I have a box of total bitches just over the hill from you and wondered if maybe you'd inherited them. A box of midrib perforating nasty, explosive [bleeps]. No queen cells today though so you're safe but I hate to think what the colony's drones will be up to. However today I swapped boxes with an apparently queenless small colony now with a protected cell, returned the supers to the original site, split the double brood onto two separate stands and after dispatching the queen added protected cells in each. Might work, but I'd best check them in a few days for more emergency queen cells of their own line.

    Great discussion on Snelgrove II, thanks. You've got me thinking, perhaps I'll try it.

  3. #133
    Senior Member Adam's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post

    Great discussion on Snelgrove II, thanks. You've got me thinking, perhaps I'll try it.
    I've never tried it either. (I do have Snelgroves book which I remember was not a particularly fun read).

  4. #134
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Splits ... weight can be an issue particularly if there are supers involved as well. To my considerable surprise I've got four supers (though in fairness, one has only just been added) on the queenright half of a colony I Pagden'd much earlier in the month. I'm hoping to find the new laying Q in the other 'half' tomorrow. It was a very prolific colony from early season and I'm pleased I did a classic artificial swarm, rather than use a split board.

    Bad tempered girls ... definitely not the ones I got this time. If they arrive I'll be returning them pronto. Look out for a red Paynes 8 frame nuc box with a biohazard sticker arriving in your apiary

  5. #135
    Senior Member Adam's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by madasafish View Post
    I have a hive with a 2915 Blue Buckfast queen.Never swarmed...
    My 2015 'breeder' queen has not swarmed - she is now in a nuc with a couple of frames of brood and getting very very slow although the brood pattern is as solid as you would like to see. The bees are currently on their third supercedure queencell (of which the other two have been harvested already). Another 2015 'non-swarmed' queen was superceded last autumn and I rescued her whilst daughter was in the hive and popped her in a nuc to overwinter, she faded away a month or so back with a supercedure virgin now in residence.
    My girls tend to not swarm (I am tempting fate again) and supercede after two summers.

    Question:- Does queen longevity indicate that her daughters will also be long-lived and hence more productive than short-lived ones?

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    Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post
    Splits ... weight can be an issue particularly if there are supers involved as well. )
    It's a very pleasant issue to have.
    Amount of hive stands can be a determining point as to whether you "Pagden" or "Snelgrove". I've just had to turn a Snelgrove into a pagden as this was on a field of OSR now gone over.....so the top half + queen is now in my garden with a Snelgrove floor....and the bottom half plus a queen cell from my breeder queen plus three supers (now empty as cleared full ones) is now residing in an out apiary where a field of OSR just came into flower last week.

  7. #137
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post
    To my considerable surprise I've got four supers (though in fairness, one has only just been added) on the queenright half of a colony I Pagden'd much earlier in the month.
    Anyone have a view on whether splits with the old queen gather honey better than equivalent splits with queen cells?

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    Quote Originally Posted by gavin View Post
    Anyone have a view on whether splits with the old queen gather honey better than equivalent splits with queen cells?
    Hell of a question Gavin!
    At the beginning of a honey flow if you remove or cage the queen you can harvest more honey than in an equivalent hive left queen right, however, the colony is then spent until it gets through another cycle of brood rearing
    A colony intent on swarming but split leaving the old queen some brood and the flyers can go two ways, either behave as if it's swarmed and work like stingo bringing in lots of honey, or still have swarming on the "hive" mind and be in a passive lethargic waiting mood refusing to put much weight on foraging.
    A split with the foragers, brood and queen cells tends to not pile on weight until the new queen gets going.
    (All in my opinion/experience of course and subject to the usual caveats; locality, bees and beekeepers perception all vary)

  9. #139
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    I usually set up my vertical splits so that any supers are with the most populated box. I reverse the boxes after a week, trim down to one QC in the queenless box and rearrange the supers for the reorientating flyers.
    However, I've been known to (regularly ) get it completely wrong.

    Like mbc says ... I've certainly notices that queenless boxes pile the honey in, though disappointingly I think they often preferentially fill the brood frames first.

  10. #140
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Thanks guys. This is something I don't think I've thought about before and don't recall seeing discussed anywhere.

    Quote Originally Posted by mbc View Post
    Hell of a question Gavin!
    Maybe, but hell of an answer!

    What I've been noticing recently - in this long, continuously decent spring, fits your observations well, mbc. Some colonies (with queen cells) I thought might put their little feet on the gas pedal regarding honey collection (especially being relieved of the burden of feeding young brood) instead are going a bit listless. Some just passive and some passive-aggressive . That was the dogma in my head and was what I was expecting, that numbers of foragers minus the demand for brood rearing gives the surplus available for storage. The hive numbers were too few and the thoughts too recent to be worth offering, hence the question.

    So is the Pagden-type split (side to side or vertically) the ideal one for maximising honey production?

    Haven't tried removing or caging queens at the start of a honey flow, but I'm mostly taking out queens in colonies that are making queen cells. Yes, there is usually honey already coming into the brood nest before I do this as the queen's laying reduces but after the split things seem to go quieter. All very casual though - I shouldn't even suggest this without actually weighing colonies. Maybe someone with hive scales has proper data.

    C4U might have a view but is currently trying to do the work of about 73 strapping Polish lads so maybe that's one for the quieter months. He does give the box with the old queen the flyers I think in the vertical split system he uses.

    Maybe they 'know' they have to preserve themselves for the brood rearing tasks ahead rather than beat themselves to death stashing in a huge crop for the future of the colony. It is always nice to rationalise these things even when my own observations are definitely built on sand.

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