Will your bees attempt to swarm in May

[Feckless Drone]

Yes, most of my colonies made swarming preparations that required to be dealt with and I should have Qs on mating flights during the last week. Mistimed my intervention, or missed more advanced Q cells in two colonies, by two days, and lost clipped Qs. One colony started with just two Q-cells early on which looked more supercedure than swarming but I still intervened. I did catch a lovely prime swarm at my apiary, not up a tree but in a goose pen, on a bush at waist height - 16 inquisitive, thankfully calm observers. I've never seen a swarm so big, I had to do two trips with a Paynes nuc to then completely fill up a brood box with foundation. I can only surmise someone keeping a double brood box (which I don't) and a very strong colony lost this one. OSR on tap and after a few days the foundation was drawn without any feeding, Q laying well and I had to put a super on. Q was easy to spot, lifted the crown board and there she was on top of a frame, marked blue and since she had a full set of wings definitely not mine! Well, she is now.

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi fatshark
I just fill extractor with lukewarm water and leave it a while
That gets the worst off Mrs DR usually takes over at this point so I'm not sure what happens next



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[The Drone Ranger]

You have been lucky FD that sounds like a good colony to have captured

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[fatshark]

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[Neils]

Mine may not be thinking of swarming, but someone else's did. I know swarmy bees and all that, but some bees are better than no bees I think. We're now back up to three colonies and if the weather stays on our side we may even get some honey yet this year!

[The Drone Ranger]

The oil seed rape is ending now so the queen cell checks need stepping up

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[The Drone Ranger]

If you have been Snelgrove boarding and have given plenty room below the board to avoid queen cells you might want to take the old queen plus the couple of old frames in the bottom out to a nuc
Then the get the broodboxes back together with the new queen
Get your honey in supers off at same time
Otherwise the old queen can take off with a humongous swarm and your honey

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[Black Comb]

Good tip Dr.
I tried a modified Snelgrove this year. Reverse bottom box, leave Q with half brood in there. Top box entrance at front, half brood and all flying bees. Supers on top. It worked and I got 3 usable cells. 1 into nuc, left one in top box and also made up an Apidea. bottom box may be depleted of stores so keep an eye on it. All 3 queens got mated. But, I use jumbo Langstroth and to keep checking bottom box means lots of lifting. Also, btm box with old queen now racing away, nearly full box of brood. I used this as swarm prevention as the Q was laying like mad. Also, top box was chock full of stores, they even seemed to take it down from the supers. I won't use it again, original Snelgrove seems easier to me.
I've had a few others throw up Q cells, nuc method suits me best.

No OSR near me.

[Bridget]

Not in May but in June. It turns out they were not from the colony I expected but a large one on double brood. Caught but only a couple of frames. Pretty certain it was not a caste as that hive still busy and with four/five day larvae so that ties in with the swarm going on Monday in that v warm humid weather with a big downpour a few hours later. Saturday there were a lot of bees around that hive, not a swarm but more like a returning queen from a mating flight, fingers crossed. So why the small swarm from a big colony?
The swarm is doing well with lots of eggs laid. This is a queen in her first full summer and came on well after winter.

[Emma]

Yes. They did prepare to swarm in May. Exactly as they'd indicated. The one with the early drones went first, milkies by 16 May. Egged queen cups in all the others the same week.
Perfect timing to catch some great queen-mating weather - and to demand my time at my busiest, most impossible time for work, and to threaten casts every time I travelled for a meeting, unless I managed to win a quite challenging game of hunt-the-hidden-queen-cells.
Talent. Sheer talent. I love their timing... in an exhausted kind of way.
I managed to keep the colonies mostly together, though, as planned, and they've gone and clogged up the hives with this pesky sticky stuff which makes the boxes far too heavy to lift. Really annoying. Does anyone have a spare honey press?!