Swarm cells

[Silvbee]

Hi all,

Quick question if you find swarm cells and remove the queen will the bees now see these as supercedure cells i.e. unlikely to produce casts if all cells are left in tact or will the beek still have to reduce the number of cells to prevent casts?

Many thanks

[mbc]

They'll still be swarm cells to the bees.
The best way I've found to prevent casts is to pull the virgins once they're ripe, destroying any unripe ones as you go, the bees won't throw a cast however many virgins are loose so long as there aren't any sealed queen cells left.

[Jon]

If you have swarm cells and you remove the queen they will make more emergency queen cells

[EK.Bee]

A useful guide:

http://www.wbka.com/wp-content/uploa...e-WBKA-WAG.pdf

Pagden Method Artificial swarm

http://barnsleybeekeepers.org.uk/pagden.html

[Paul_]

If you remove the queen they'll make more queen cells until the larvae is too old to raise new queens. So it's worth going back a few days after you remove the queen and knock down any new cells. It took me a couple of seasons to work that out and until I did I lost a few swarms to that mistake.