Was there a thread on this already ... or did I see that on another forum?

Thought I'd share Horsley/Snelgrove experience with you.

Made and used 2 Horsley boards for first time this year. They enabled successful queen replacement and the harvesting of some good queen cells for nucs. I found them very easy to use and appreciated the bees' capacity to even out their numbers and share stores most of the time, when the slide was open sufficiently for them to move between boxes.

Used 1 bought Snelgrove with less success. Got a new queen all right, but she absconded when they ran low on stores because I'd bled off too many flying bees into the lower box. Seems a big guessing game knowing when and how much of that to do. Don't want to be checking them too often either. Any advice on that?

During the swarming fever of July, when we had lovely weather, some bees were swarming before Q cells were capped and it was almost impossible to get ahead of of them all. So I'll make more Horsley boards and next year try using them on all the stronger colonies.

Would love to hear more on this.

Kate