todays news

[greengumbo]

Okay. I'm recovering from the heat and have just sunk an irn bru so bear with me and my inane ramblings.

I attempted to catch a truly massive swarm in a 6 frame national nuc box. Unfortunately I kind of bodged it in and it was clearly too big for the box. So I have got half of it in another nuc box I had spare.

One of the nucs has a queen and the bees are fanning like mad at the entrance. The other I have closed. Can I stick a mated queen in the queenless half and bingo 2 swarmed nucs ? Or is it best to combine and chuck into a full sized hive when I can (might be a few days).

Okay the bru is kicking in. Onwards.

[Feckless Drone]

Can I stick a mated queen in the queenless half and bingo 2 swarmed nucs ?

Yeah - I had similar experience last year, luckily I was able to swap over from nuc to full size brood box in two goes at the swarm. You could introduce a mated Q - in cage of course, and after leaving them for a few days they should be receptive. My worry would be the Q-less part absconding when they sense the problem. I don't know if anyone has seen that happen. But could be a good approach to increase your numbers.

Do you know where the swarm originated? Someone using double brood box setup? If that Q can hold the colony together at such a size before swarming in an OSR environment then she should be good un.

[fatshark]

Some brood perhaps to encourage them to stay as well?

[The Drone Ranger]

Okay. I'm recovering from the heat and have just sunk an irn bru so bear with me and my inane ramblings.

I attempted to catch a truly massive swarm in a 6 frame national nuc box. Unfortunately I kind of bodged it in and it was clearly too big for the box. So I have got half of it in another nuc box I had spare.

One of the nucs has a queen and the bees are fanning like mad at the entrance. The other I have closed. Can I stick a mated queen in the queenless half and bingo 2 swarmed nucs ? Or is it best to combine and chuck into a full sized hive when I can (might be a few days).

Okay the bru is kicking in. Onwards.

Hi GG
You might have problems getting them to accept a queen
I've tried in the past with no success
You can get a second broodbox for a Payne's or Maisemore nuc
I would go with the excellent advice of putting them all in a broodbox instead

Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

[greengumbo]

Hi GG
You might have problems getting them to accept a queen
I've tried in the past with no success
You can get a second broodbox for a Payne's or Maisemore nuc
I would go with the excellent advice of putting them all in a broodbox instead

Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

Ah the fun and joy.

So it turns out I had my halfs mixed up. Locked the one with the queen in by mistake thinking it was Q-ve and the one fanning like mad that I assumed was Q+ was not. The Q-ve one tried to bugger off but I stopped them again. This time I had a mated queen from an apidea into a cage and as soon as I put it in they started acting all happy.

So the upshot is I have 2 colonies from 1 swarm Even if I did bugger up the process initially.

[The Drone Ranger]

It's a wonder that the queenless half didn't just either go back up the tree or back to the hive
They usually won't stay put without the queen


Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk

[Calluna4u]

A fair number of apparently large swarm are actually composites, lots of flying bees get drawn into the excitement of the 'party' and tag along resulting in swarms you could not think of as coming from one of your own hives as it is so large.

However, most of the prime swarms have gone off already and what we are seeing coming into the bait boxes at home this past 2 weeks are all swarms with virgins, of varying sizes from 2 bars of bees up to a full box.

Prior to arriving in these boxes they have generally hung around somewhere for a day or two until the virgins have eliminated eachother and one remains. Thus it is possible that BOTH halves of your swarm might have a queen, especially if it was not especially settled in its demeanour. The most virgins we have ever taken (just by picking them out) from a single large swarm is *17*. They generally hang around rather than go into their chosen destination until they have had their 'sort out'. Its also one of the reasons they do not like to stay put in new hives, although a bar of open brood can pin them, but not always. Closed brood is ineffective although they sometimes stay, probably more a coincidence of them being ready for a hive at the same time.

[busybeephilip]

Thats one thing i have been wondering about, last season someone told me of a big swarm clustered and observed coming from my apairy, i had dozens of apidea type boxes with virgins flying but when i checked my full hives all queens were present, however a few of the mating boxes had absconded. I reckoned that the virgins had, as you say, attracted flying bees to create a swarm. I now place my mating boxes well away from my hives to help avoid this sort of behavior happening (if it does). could also be linked to the idea of Apairy Vacinity Mating. I can picture that time of day when loads of young bees are making their first orientation flight being attracted to queen mating activities esp when there are 30 odd hives spewing young bees out at the same time.

[Calluna4u]

A tale of disaster related to the above from Phillip. Disasters plague us all from time to time, so while this was a real waste of time and effort in the queen unit it just goes to show that nothing is foolproof and any beek that has never had a disaster is probably full of the fertiliser emanating from the male members of our bovine friends......

Think back only a short while...though it now seems so distant....to the heatwave of 3 days we had. We made a late start to the queen rearing this year due to the cold dry east winds not being the best for producing quality QC's. The first wave of mating boxes had been placed on their stands a few days earlier. The hot days were mayhem even in the cooler conditions in the forest where the mating boxes are and a significant swarm appeared about 20 feet up in a pine tree. From 15 to 20 of the mating boxes were either empty or severely bee depleted.

The swarm was seriously unsettled, moved location several times over the next three days, divided into multiple clusters and went back together again. After this they ended up on a fence post and were a bit quieter, without the masses of dancing bees waggling away on the face of the cluster. One of my guys on his own initiative hived it in a Langstroth nuc box, and to my surprise it stayed put. The carnage among the virgins must have been complete. Now it is in great order with a fine queen laying strongly. Its is almost entirely (we think) the product of the absconded mating boxes, so the sad part is all the lost virgins grafted and raised by Jolanta who found the whole episode disheartening. At least she did not have the full compliment set out already. One UK rearer, of long experience, who got going early told me he had zero success from his first 200 and what had not absconded had to be shaken out. Big loss.

I tell Jolanta its just a freak weather pattern to blame and just to take it as one of these things and carry on. Its not an easy country to be a queen rearer on any scale.

[greengumbo]

A tale of disaster related to the above from Phillip. Disasters plague us all from time to time, so while this was a real waste of time and effort in the queen unit it just goes to show that nothing is foolproof and any beek that has never had a disaster is probably full of the fertiliser emanating from the male members of our bovine friends......

Think back only a short while...though it now seems so distant....to the heatwave of 3 days we had. We made a late start to the queen rearing this year due to the cold dry east winds not being the best for producing quality QC's. The first wave of mating boxes had been placed on their stands a few days earlier. The hot days were mayhem even in the cooler conditions in the forest where the mating boxes are and a significant swarm appeared about 20 feet up in a pine tree. From 15 to 20 of the mating boxes were either empty or severely bee depleted.

The swarm was seriously unsettled, moved location several times over the next three days, divided into multiple clusters and went back together again. After this they ended up on a fence post and were a bit quieter, without the masses of dancing bees waggling away on the face of the cluster. One of my guys on his own initiative hived it in a Langstroth nuc box, and to my surprise it stayed put. The carnage among the virgins must have been complete. Now it is in great order with a fine queen laying strongly. Its is almost entirely (we think) the product of the absconded mating boxes, so the sad part is all the lost virgins grafted and raised by Jolanta who found the whole episode disheartening. At least she did not have the full compliment set out already. One UK rearer, of long experience, who got going early told me he had zero success from his first 200 and what had not absconded had to be shaken out. Big loss.

I tell Jolanta its just a freak weather pattern to blame and just to take it as one of these things and carry on. Its not an easy country to be a queen rearer on any scale.

Wow. Amazing set of events there Murray. Disheartening for Jolanta but its a neat set up she has there and I'm sure she'll bounce back.