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Swarm control method 1 - Super easy
Swarm control
You should assume that your bees will swarm every year and if you
don’t manage your bees during the critical months for swarming (May,
June and July) you risk loosing some of your bees.
When will my bees swarm?
Unfortunately there isn’t an answer to this question. However, bees will not
swarm before the colony has completed building it’s nest. In other words,
while the colony is still expanding. You should monitor the growth of the
colony each visit by marking the position of the last frame with brood in
your record book and then leaving an empty frame behind it. If there
is brood in the empty frame at the next visit, the nest is still expanding.
If not the brood nest will have reached its maximum size and you should
artificially swarm your bees using one of the methods in this chapter. If
you don’t monitor the colony to know when it’s stopped expanding, these
are the other signs that the bees are preparing to swarm.
Signs of Swarming:
• Queen cells on any of the frames. The bees are most likely to swarm
the day before the first queen cell is sealed, this is 7 days after the egg is
laid. If you find queen cups with eggs in them or queen cells with larvae
in them on any of the frames, the bees will be at an advanced stage of
swarming and you must take immediate action.
Stop the queen leaving the hive -
A swarm won’t leave a hive
without the queen so by trapping her behind the divider board with the
queen excluder in place you can effectively keep her in the hive.
What you will need
-
2 new brood frames and a divider board with
queen excluder.
Method
Step 1
- You must also move any frames with eggs or young larvae to the
rear of the hive, behind the queen excluder with the queen so that the
bees at the front can’t raise a new queen to swarm with.
Step 2
- Add the divider board with the queen excluder attachment.
Although the queen can’t leave the hive, she is still part of the colony as
the worker bees can move freely through the excluder. Provide the queen
with empty frames (already drawn with comb if possible) to lay on. As
the brood matures move any frames with sealed or advanced brood to
the other side of the excluder so that emerging drones don’t get trapped
behind unable to reach the entrance.
Step 3
- Move a few frames of honey or empty frames (i.e without any
brood) to the front of the hive.
Step 4
- When the nest has reached full size and is not expanding any
more, you need to allow the bees to complete the swarming process
which is the only way to be sure that the risk of swarming is over. The
final stage of the swarming process is the rearing of a new queen.
Step 5
- Remove the queen excluder from the divider and replace it with
the solid section to completely separate the two sides of the Beehaus.
Open the rear entrance of the Beehaus and within 48hrs all the older flying
bees will return to the front entrance (the one that they have been used
to using).
Step 6
- You can now find and remove the old queen from the rear of the
Beehaus. This side of the colony will start to raise a new queen.
Step 7
- A week after removing the queen cut out all but one queen cell.
Once the new queen is mated and laying you can unite the two colonies.
You do this by removing the solid section from the divider and replacing
it with a piece of newspaper. The bees nibble through the newspaper and
gradually combine.
Step 8
- The front part of the Beehaus has been queenless since being
completely separated and unable to raise a new queen because it didn’t
have any eggs or young larvae. Normally this would demoralise bees but
during the peak swarming season (May – July) the bees simply put all their
efforts into collecting nectar. You should make sure that you have supers
on the front for the bees to store the nectar.
A diagram of the colony before swarm control.
Queen
• A warm, sunny day but the bees are not flying strongly. This means they
have been diverted from foraging.
• When you raise the front cover board, there is a clump of bees hanging
quietly underneath – these are young bees that are waiting for the signal
to swarm out. The queen slows her egg laying and slims in readiness to
fly, while around 1500 young bees continue to emerge each day from
the sealed brood for whom there is less and less work – so they join this
incipient swarm cluster.
A queen cell.
A queen cup.
Diagram of colony after Step 3. Note the queen excluder in the divider board. The
queen cannot leave the hive so the bees can’t swarm.
Queen
Front
Rear
Open
Closed
Diagram of colony after Step 8.
Queen
Egg laid in
queen cup
Day 1
Day 3
Day 7
Day 8
Day 16
Egg hatches
A day before
cell is sealed.
Critical point
Cell is sealed
Queen
emerges
Front
Rear
Open
Closed
Front
Rear
Open
Open