Dangers of Double brood box.

[Greengage]

I had a very strong hive coming out of Winter, I could not locate the queen but I went ahead and added a second brood box on April 22nd, I put in new frames and foundation on 28th April they had drawn 5 frames in the top box, I continued feeding heavily to encourage them, Still no sign of the Queen but by the 5th May she was in the top brood box laying well still no sign of her, this was getting dodgy. But I kept going by the 17th of May I decided I had better locate her so placed a queen excluder between the two boxs and couple of days later confirmed she was now isolated in the top box and going strong, On 20th May I now had 24 frames in both boxs the bottom box had 5 frames of sealed brood and one unsealed QC and 7 frames of stores while the top box had 8 frames of brood two of stores and two frames full drawn, I had planned on Splitting the hive on 24rd but at 2.45pm a huge swarm issued from the hive as I was observing it, this is not good, anyway they landed very close by which I thought strange and they were on the ground, 30 minutes later they returned to the hive and things seemed to settle down, so I left well enough alone. (Reason I had to reopen a walled garden due to tour)
it appears the queen was trapped in the top boox and could not leave with the swarm so I got back in early the following day, Found the Queen (Dont know how just lucky so many bees) placed her in a Nuc, split the hive into two seperate brood boxes with sealed queen cells, and removed two Nucs from it and a sealed queen cell for an Apidea. Lesson here dont go messing with huge numbers of bees in public area.

[Adam]

When I move bees to a double brood box I place some brood in the top box above the brood that remains in the lower one. Hopefully I will have some drawn comb to surround the brood area, the rest is foundation if that's all I've got. The idea of my system is that the colony feels less congested (in my view) and they can expand the brood-nest as they see fit after that. Old grotty comb, if left at the outside of the lower brood box tends to be ignored or emprtied of stores unless the colony is a big one - so this place is a good spot for clearing old comb before disposal.

[Duncan]

So you are selecting for the swarming trait - well done! The cycle will be repeated again next spring.

[The Drone Ranger]

So you are selecting for the swarming trait - well done! The cycle will be repeated again next spring.

In fairness it was a big colony so always a possibility of a swarm but by the sound of things pretty good bees for the rape


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[Greengage]

So you are selecting for the swarming trait - well done! The cycle will be repeated again next spring.

How do you make this out?

[Duncan]

Try and figure it out for yourself.
The use of cells resulting from the swarming impulse is junk beekeeping from junk bees by irresponsible and inconsiderate beekeepers. This error in judgement has been mentioned as the SOP on this forum several times recently. By using swarm cells you are selecting your bees to have a highly developed swarming instinct which will get worse year by year. Furthermore the numerous drones produced by these colonies will mate with other colonies in the area and they too will develop a high swarming index. All this undermines and with open mated queens degenerates the decades of selection and breeding of bees being used by other beekeepers. We often see fingers being pointed at other sourced bees as the root of all bee problems when in actual fact the problem is in your own backyard.

[Greengage]

Well holy smoke,Your so knowledgeable, How would I know if it was an impulse swarm or a natural swarm, or is there a differance "All this undermines and with open mated queens degenerates the decades of selection and breeding of bees being used by other beekeepers" are there many of these people around and where do I find them, I take it there all in universities studying Swarm control, genetics and such stuff, would I be better getting one of the Apparatus that inseminates queens and buy them in from Italy or there was a fellow on facebook getting them from Argentina, that would be different genetics. PS whats a SOP I put it in the search and nothing came up.

[Duncan]

Might be a good idea to go to night school and do a course in English with emphasis in spelling and capital letter use, follow that up with a good course in actual beekeeping management. In addition you should go and work for a commercial beekeeper for a season or two.

[Feckless Drone]

Might be a good idea to go to night school and do a course in English with emphasis in spelling and capital letter use, follow that up with a good course in actual beekeeping management.

Ah, Duncan, Duncan, Duncan! These comments are not really very helpful. There is an old Scottish saying - if you cannot be kind be quiet.

Not really, I made that up but I think it might be, one day.

[gavin]

Just to be clear, 'Duncan' isn't his real name and there isn't anything Scottish about him. His comments are wrong and totally out of order. Interesting, though, to see a prominent Buckfast exporter so rude on a forum. Sorry, GG, but if he keeps this up he'll be history.

Just to be clear, there are some excellent bee breeders in Ireland and low swarminess is one of the criteria they use. Anyone raising bees from native Irish stock in much of Ireland through the natural swarming impulse will raise quite nice bees but if there is no selection taking place then swarminess may rise over time. However there are many breeding groups in Ireland using and propagating selected stock so if you can access that then your bees will be improved. Locally the swarminess of stocks did take a turn for the worse when carniolans became part of the mix. I think that once there is a lot of swarminess locally then over the years breeding from the more vigorous and swarmy stocks will just make things worse.

From personal experience in the last couple of years - including yesterday - I can say that it is a big mistake to use imported Buckfast in Amm or near-Amm areas. Most of my colonies are Amm or near-Amm and the worst few colonies (and they are awful, really hard to manage) are those headed by queens that crossed with Buckfast. In two of my apiaries and at the association apiary you can see this correlation between bad temper and Buckfast crosses. I made a mental note yesterday to try to look out for the colour of actual bee attacking to see if it is the hybridised individuals bent on destruction.