Will your bees attempt to swarm in May

[Greengage]

going to give this a go see what happens. tks for card info.

[fatshark]

Good stuff DR
What sort of strength are the colonies when you add the board (for Method 1)? Do you judge when it's time by frames of brood, queen cups, presence of drones or that - for once - the day is warm enough to open the box?

[nemphlar]

I'm following method 1, in this weather it can only be roughly by tonight all the hives that have a full brood box of bees and ~40% plus of brood are split with open boards on, spotted more drones wandering around no idea what age they might be.
Splitting one of the hives I spotted an unmarked queen and put the frame in the spare box, next frame had a recently hatched queen cell, went back through the brood box and found another unmarked queen with an egg still attached I'm assuming she's the mother of the brood and eggs, so put her in the top section and left the possible virgin in the bottom in case she has already orientated. I checked this hive in September and they had a good going marked queen, no idea how they managed to have a functioning queen in the interim and still try a supercedure with a queen that is laying well

[Greengage]

Checked mine yesterday, I also have supercedure capped cell, some drones wandering about, but cannot locate queen there are brood all stages and some eggs, So left cell and will wait to see what hapens, Old queen is clipped and marked, had two people looking so maybe she died. I dont know maybe she is still there but we just could not see her.

[madasafish]

One swarm this am - checked last week and missed all QCs ... Managed to rehive asap..

[gwizzie]

Hive in my back garden swarmed last night about 4 O'clock..... went through the hive yesterday about 2 hrs before that and they have 4 queen cells and one was capped...

BUT I could here a queen piping.. is that a new queen or the old one looking for the queens in the queen cells ?????

I did manage to get the swarm so All good there!!

[Calum]

our bee specialist pointed out you can tell if they will swarm according to the drone frame.
If they build it out as a single "tounge" they are happy and dont intend to swarm.
If they build a couple of tounges they are unhappy and will swarm.

Also your experience??

[The Drone Ranger]

Good stuff DR
What sort of strength are the colonies when you add the board (for Method 1)? Do you judge when it's time by frames of brood, queen cups, presence of drones or that - for once - the day is warm enough to open the box?

I have them on double broodboxes for the most part

When they are producing drone brood and the rape has started seems a good indicator
Saw the first swallows the other day could be a clue

I know from past experience by the end of may they will swarm
So I can't wait any longer than this week to put the boards in or they will start queen cells

Once they get that idea they are difficult to control with a board
Method 2 is an attempt to do that but it might be better to remove the queen to a separate nuc and let nature take its course if you find queen cells started

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[The Drone Ranger]

Just to round up I wonder if the forum posters bees did attempt to swarm in May
I haven't been up any trees so far so at least I have delayed them
Tempting fate ?

[fatshark]

No swarms from here ... though I was forced to take some preemptive action in the final week of May. So, the accurate answer to the Q was "no, they did not attempt to swarm" ... but they certainly thought about it

Things currently looking good and I'm hoping for more of this settled weather to get some queens mated. I've even got some honey ... but not enough yet to justify firing the extractor up ... I'll collect a few more supers and stack them on my honey warming cabinet to delay crystallisation (though I'm not certain they have access to OSR). Cleaning the extractor is a job I don't enjoy ...