Swarm Prevention - Does it Work?

According to Ted Hooper, when you first see Queen cells with larvae in them you should remove them.  At the next inspection if they have made new Queen cells destroy them again.  He says then many colonies will give up but if they go on to make more Queen cells, the beekeeper has to be ready to put into operation his Swarm Control Plan.  We didn't have one.

 

Rapidly swotting up using Ted's book and with the helpful advisory leaflet "Beekeeping - Making Increase" issued by the Welsh Assembly Government with FERA and The Scottish Government, we devised our own SCP.   Surmising that there would be sealed brood in both the old and new brood chambers, the plan was to take one frame with sealed brood from each brood chamber with a Queen cell and put them in a nucleus (mini-hive) with stores, then, making sure the Queen stayed in the deep brood chamber, to make up a new colony using the frames from the old brood chamber.

 

Monitoring the weather forecast for a suitable opportunity to carry out this operation, we realised we had to act quickly before higher winds and rain return later in the week.   The SCP was put into operation 48 hours after spotting the Queen cells.   This involved an emergency dash home early from work.   The wind was cold and stronger than we had hoped for but later in the week even stronger winds are forecast.   By the time we had drunk a cup of tea (we are, after all, proper beekeepers now), reviewed the plan and gathered all the equipment by the apiary, the afternoon was quietly turning to evening and the wind dropped a bit.  We leapt into action, luckily finding the Queen easily on the centre frame of the deep brood chamber - not a large light coloured Queen but a beautiful normal coloured Queen.  Queen G really has gone whether out of old age or succumbing to a younger model.

 

We set up the nucleus and new colony as planned and left the bees to go to bed, returning later to transport the new colony to the out apiary we are going to have this year about a mile away on the farm.  However, concerned that we might have left a Queen cell in with the G Bees and their new Queen, we naively set up a spare hive in the apiary just in case the G Bees still swarm.  Maybe if they do, they will find a nice home nearby attractive.  More likely they will ignore it completely!

 

Only time will tell whether the new colony and nucleus establish successfully.  There is no question that if we did nothing, many of the G Bees would be moving out at the first opportunity to find more space.  And, does swarm control work?  It looks as though we will find out soon enough!

First Inspection of the Year

Weather and work conspired against us to prevent inspection of the G Bees for the whole of March and in to April.

 

With an early nectar source nearby from willow trees and oil seed rape fields, we wanted  to offer the G Bees a new deep brood box so they could move in to it with the support of that strong nectar flow so on a still but chilly day in early March, we removed untouched fondant (food supplied to ensure they wouldn't starve late in Winter) and put the new deep brood chamber on the hive with a container of syrup on top, keeping disturbance to a minimum.

Bees flying in early Spring

 

 

Weeks passed.  It was cold; it was sunny and windy; there were some beautiful days - but only when we were at work.  Finally, last weekend we determined at least to remove the supers that had been underneath the brood chambers since last Autumn and to give the G Bees a clean floor without inspecting individual frames in the brood chambers due to the brisk wind.

 

By the time we got our gear together, the wind had dropped.  I couldn't lift the two brood chambers at the same time, so we took off the new deep brood chamber which was really quite heavy, then set aside the old brood chamber.  On top of this we observed huge white grubs & wondered what they were.  We weren't expecting Queen cells so early in the season and all the books show Queen cells hanging downwards from the sides or bottom of frames.  These larvae were in cells on the top of frames.

Continuing we reassembled the hive with a new floor putting everything back including one super of stores and an empty super to give them some more space - there are a lot of G Bees.

 

Reflecting later we realised the white grubs had been Queen larvae and most probably their cells were hanging down from frames in the deep brood chamber, becoming unattached when I lifted that off.   Not only that, on the mesh of the old floor we found the body of a large, light coloured Queen - the magical Queen G who I didn't see once last year. 

 

This means we have a very large colony who have "lost" an old Queen and who are making Queen cells.  Ah!   We were certain from the way they behaved that there must be a Queen in the colony but there is no doubt, they are preparing to swarm!  To be continued......soon.