Correx. You know it makes sense!
My birthday on Thursday so hoping to celebrate with a heatwave.
Correx. You know it makes sense!
My birthday on Thursday so hoping to celebrate with a heatwave.
I think that contrary to popular belief swarms aren't really that fussy, if they're still there at the end of the following day they will be for a while.
Good luck with them, swarms are a mixed bag. I've got some fabulous bees from swarms and also some absolute horrors.
Our queen rearing group meets tonight.
Looking forward to it as the weather is brilliant today and is set fair all this week.
Should get quite a bit of grafting done.
No, they aren't as fussy as some suggest, but maybe British mongrels behave differently from the US bees that were studied for swarm and bait hive research.Originally Posted by Nellie
I think they're quite happy in their new-build des res. It's much more up-market than a slightly crumpled cardboard wine box, waterproofed with a bin bag.
Today, here, has been a gloriously sunny day. The sort of day you really have to spend sitting in a garage whilst a car fails an MOT and then gets fixed!
Went thro my Newzealand stocks today.All O.K. except one which had swarm cells.I decided to do an artificial swarm and set about finding the queen.Could I find her?,could I heck.I decided to "sieve" her out by shaking all the bees thro' a queen excluder into an empty hive placed on the original stand.A few puffs of smoke and the bees ran down into the brood box.Finally when there were just a few bees left above the excluder I spotted her.She was slim and looking as tho' the bees had starved her to get her ready for swarming.I picked her up ,placed her onto a drawn comb,trapped her with a "crown of thorns" and marked her.I then re-arranged everything so that the queen on her frame of drawn comb was in the bottom box which I filled out with frames of foundation.On went the queen excluder,supers and finally the old brood box with the brood.I covered them up to allow the nurse bees to re-populate the old brood box.Tomorrow I will split the old brood into neucs and hopefully get a couple of good mated queens later.Despite all the manipulations the bees were still pleasant to work with no aggression towards me.Shows what gentle stocks and nice weather can do to make beekeeping a good experience.
too true... Seems alot of work to do it that way. I tend to just move the hive to one side (break out all the swarm cells except those on one frame) and put a hive with a that frame with 2-3 queen cells on it + a frame of food, filled up with drawn comb... Sorts out the issue without needing to locate the queen...
Needs to be done while the bees are still flying well, so all the flying bees return to the old spot, and the hive that wanted to swarm no longer has the resources to do that (flying bees gone as if they had swarmed, young bees needed to raise whatever brood is still in the hive). Its a good idea to also remove excessive closed brood , or they'll want to swarm again as soon as thats hatched... As I learnt this year... twice...
1 frame closed brood = 3 frames of bees when they hatch.
Last edited by Calum; 22-05-2012 at 09:14 PM.
Splodge
The weather has warmed up here as well. Late this afternoon I opened up a hive found the queen and set about marking her. Like Grizzly I also used a crown of thorns but unfortunately instead of a nice neat dot, the queen ended up with a yellow splodge. I didn’t press the crown in hard enough and the queen moved just as I was applying the marking pen. This is not the first time this has happened and I have lost the odd queen in the past because of heavy-handed marking. Hopefully she will be OK and I’ll check the hive in a few days. I’m not nimble fingered so practising on drones would make no difference to me. Only another five queens left to mark!!!
I used to mark like this but I now prefer the plunger cage. Just steer the queen in using your fingers by laying the cage in front of her. You can then walk away and mark without the bees around you. It is easy to clip as well as she will stick a wing out through the cross wires if you maneuver her gently with the plunger. I think I have all mine marked and clipped now. I have one in a nuc which is marked but I can't remember if I clipped her last year.
I used to use that crown of thorns from Thornes and sometimes had Lindsay's problem. Gave one of my pair of them to Ma Grizzly in BC and the other one never gets used now. For the last few years I've just picked her up by a wing or sometimes the pair of wings. Most people have the dexterity to just grab her, easier when she bends over to look into a cell. That means that it is easier if your queens are behaving normally - so no smoke and gentle handling with no gloves or latex ones. If you want to trim a wing it ought to be easy to do before you let her go.
Easy to do, needs no equipment so you're not fumbling for small items that were put in one of those safe places that Wraith mentioned, and with the added benefit of impressing watching beginners even more than otherwise. You know it makes sense.
Calum I particularly wanted to find that queen.Previously she had always eluded me so was never marked.She was the only queen that I had never marked so now they are all marked and so much easier to find.
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