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Thread: Artificial swarm variants

  1. #11
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Ha! Then you are the kind gentleman who donated stock to the Claverhouse Group last year. I should be grateful that your stock has a tendency to be swarmy as Forida and Wendy in their first year had more swarms and casts than boxes to receive them, so I made good some of my losses from the 2009-10 winter with bees ultimately from you. They are noticeably more swarmy than bees I've had before.

    I should get my head around the Snelgrove system sometime (Forida did try to teach me - it was lovely to see the tutee become the teacher) but for now I have enough to learn about Apideas and grafting. We were given a donation of two Smith Snelgrove boards by Marsh Croall for the association apiary so we'll probably have a go with them next year.

    The Amm-looking stock we bought recently was in double brood boxes and made it into June with no queen cells. That's my kind of bee! One of the pair didn't mind being inspected in the rain. I'm not sure about the early season build-up yet - we'll see that next year.

    Gavin

  2. #12
    Senior Member Adam's Avatar
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    For queenright queenraising I use as Jon - what is in essence the Demaree method.

    I tried the Demaree method this year as swarm control on one hive and it didn't really work. A week after the demaree I cut out the queencells from the top brood chamber. In the lower chamber the clipped queen was not laying. She continued to not lay until all the brood had emerged (with the exception of a few drones). She went into a mini-nuc and started to lay straight away so there was nothigng wrong with her. So I put in a queen and they trashed her. I knew there was no other queen present but I put in a test frame anyway and queencells were produced to confirm queenlessness. Then another queen went in. Plastic tab over the candy. 2 days later the tab was removed. 5 or so days after that the queen was laying and there were queencells being produced - sort of in a hurry. Long ones on the comb but with no larvae in them - not just a queen cup. A few days after that the queencells were full of RJ and larvae so they were removed just beforre sealing. Maybe they will accept the queen now as she was still laying (as of last week). I'll check again. This WAS a double brood colony doing so well too.

    Was the demaree the problem? Probably not; I had another colony early this year where the queen stopped laying for no apparent reason. They've now got a swarmy Carnolian queen in there to build up fast.

  3. #13

    Default Horsley Board

    Quote Originally Posted by Kate Atchley View Post
    Horsley Boards

    On the basis I don't have to stick too closely to the topic ... has anyone recent experience of Horsley boards? Have made two and hope to try them out on my two largest colonies ... to use the top brood box as queen-cell rearers, possibly in two batches.

    Have read the bumf but practical experience always beats the theory.

    Kate
    Michael Badger's BeeCraft article is on this link courtesy of The Beekeeping forum.co.uk
    http://idlebeekeepers.co.uk/upload%2...ey%20board.pdf

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