As you can see, it’s completely dried up and black, the pulp has been removed and all that is left is the skin and what might have been seeds…?

Do bananas have seeds?

Well they must have otherwise – what it the raison d’etre?

Anyway, the whole thing smells of propolis only.

Effects on the Bees

The bees seem very strong and healthy but then we’ve had about a month of benevolent weather and a strong ivy flow. No ill effects to be seen and I didn’t see dead bees being shovelled out during the banana or see them hanging out the front.

Chalkbrood effects

As for the chalkbrood – well there is plenty of brood about the place and the pattern is good but it hasn’t gone away you know. It’s still there but not so much I think but then they  were treated with MAQS beforehand which seems to trigger some vigorous housekeeping.

Conclusion?

Wrong time of the year and completely unscientific but the bees didn’t seem to suffer at all and I’d certainly try it again mid summer.

Unless  anyone out there can come up with a better explanation for the shape, and indeed the size, of a banana – I’d say it’s so they can  elegantly encircle the brood nest like this:

Click here for more on Chalkbrood and the Banana Thing

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While there is ‘anecdotal evidence’ for  bananas as a cure for chalkbrood – it is not scientifically proven.

However,  it isn’t scientifically disproven either and there’s no smoke without fire.  Read on…

Here is the usual response to the Banana Thing:

But like smoke without fire – could there be something to it?

Just so we know what we’re talking about – here’s the recipe:

Recipe

• Cut an unpeeled banana in half lengthways;
• Sit the two halves – cut side uppermost – on the top bars of the brood box;
• Add a 1″ eke if need be;
• Replace the crownboard;
• Close the Varroa floor;
• Leave alone for 1 month;
• When you come back the chalk brood will be gone. Apparently.

But what is the mechanism?

It could be:

• Hygienic behaviour;
• Alarm Pheromone mimicry;
• Ethylene;
• Ethylene breakdown product;
• Something else;
• One of the above, several of the above, all of the above or none of them.

Hygienic Behaviour

We all express hygienic behaviour – even me. Like if you get a whiff of something horrible – you check your shoes and if they’re clear you conclude you imagined it. If you get another whiff you look further afield – somebody else’s shoes, under the table perhaps, or behind the settee.  If there’s still nothing you might assume it came in through the window but when you get that third whiff you really go into overdrive: you get the torch out and the rubber gloves on.

That is hygienic behaviour but when the bees do it – there’s more of them and they don’t wait for the third whiff –  they just go bananas at the first one.

Alarm Pheromone

With bees, the  horrible smell could be simply that rotting banana smell – we all know they have a short fuse. However, I read somewhere that bee alarm pheromone  smells like bananas and I remember hearing of somebody who came into close contact with savage Africanised bees – he was well protected inside a strong beesuit but the bees were going bananas stinging the suit and I remember him saying there was a smell like bananas. I’ve also heard it said – don’t eat bananas before going to your bees because they don’t like it and perhaps that’s why. That’s more anecdotal stuff for you.

Either way, perhaps the smell of alarm pheromone puts the bees into a state of heightened awareness and who knows how that might be expressed; they might reach for the rubber gloves and the torch.

Ethylene

If you put a ripe banana in a paper bag with an Unripe Thing – the banana will ripen the Unripe Thing. This is because  ripening bananas are a source of ethylene which is a gas and also a plant hormone. 7 days after the banana leaves the cooler and hits peak-ripeness the ethylene production spikes thus:

If at this point your banana and your unripe thing are in the bag together – the ethylene will tell the unripe thing to get ripe – and it will, because as we said, ethylene is a plant hormone and plants do as they are hormonally instructed.  This is a scientifically proven fact by the way – not an anecdote.

If you further enclose your paper bag of fruits in  plastic bag this will prevent the escape of ethylene and the effects will be more pronounced as ethylene causes more ethylene to be produced. This has implications for the banana chalkbrood thing and if you try it you should refrain from looking under the crownboard or you will release the ethylene.

Fruit ripeners use ethylene commercially to ripen fruit and fruit merchants will chemically remove ethylene from refrigerated units to help preserve it.

What has this to do with chalkbrood says you? Well for one thing it shows you that ethylene itself is a chemical that can provoke a reaction in plants.

In the presence of oxygen, ethylene can degrade to other interesting chemicals.

Ethylene Degradation Path

• Ethylene C₂H₄ ->
• Ethylene oxide C2H4O ->
• Oxalic acid C₂H₂O₄ ->
• 2 CO₂

In the presence of oxygen, ethylene degrades to ethylene oxide – another gas but one which is used as a fumigant to kill fungi on stored grain and artefacts in museums. Also insects!

More importantly, ethylene oxide has been shown to decontaminate honeybee larvae killed by chalkbrood. There’s interesting!

Click here for a look at that paper

The ethylene oxide further degrades to oxalic acid and we know what that does. To Varroa anyway.

But is the degradation spontaneous – that’s what I’d like to know.

Is there a Chemist in the house…?

Experiment

There’s enough there to arouse my curiosity so rather than just dismiss it as a myth let’s try it and see what happens. It just so happens that I’ve got a hive of bees here with bad chalkbrood …. I’ll let you know what happens but that will be more anecdotal evidence.

Click here for chalkbrood and the banana results

Click here for more about Chalkbrood on this site

Click here for Chalkbrood on DaveCushman’s site

Click here for more on Ethylene gas

Click here for Ethylene as a plant hormone

Wikipedia on Ethylene

Gochnauer, T. A.  & Margetts,V. J. (1980) Decontaminating Effect of Ethylene Oxide on Honeybee Larvae Previously Killed by Chalk-Brood Disease. Journal of Apicultural Research. 19: 261-264

Take a look at this frame of bees above – yes there are several things there that should put you on alert!

What you do, or don’t do, in response is the essence of beekeeping.

Click here for more on Colony Assessment and a downloadable sheet.

Hooper’s Five Questions:

1.  Does the colony have enough space?

2.  Is the queen present and laying properly?

3.  Development:

   Is the colony building up in size as fast as the others?

   Are there any queen cells?

4.  Are there any signs of disease?

5.  Have they got enough stores to carry them through to your next visit?

Does the colony have enough room?

Sometimes, the bees can pull in a super-abundance of ivy honey late in the year which far exceeds what they need to come through the winter.  Come spring when the queen needs space to lay – there simply isn’t any. This situation is termed – ‘honey-bound’.  If your bees are honey-bound you need to do something about it.

• If you have spare drawn frames you can remove a couple of the fullest frames of stores from the outsides and add the drawn frames to either side of the brood nest.
• If you don’t – then you will have to add foundation and – as long as they are strong enough – the bees will draw it as they need it. You could even feed them at this point if you think they need help.

The other reason for lack of space is when they have become so strong they have filled the box!

You should begin to add supers as soon as you find your bees covering the top frames when you remove the crownboard. Give supers early rather than late. If it is still chilly you can put a sheet of newspaper between the brood box and the queen excluder. This will keep them warm and give them options – if they need the space they will chew their way through and if they don’t they won’t.

You need to make a note of what you did/ need to do/ equipment to bring next time etc.

Is the queen present and is she laying properly?

I’m not going to tell you how to find your queen here. It is a knack and if you can’t find her then practice, practice, practice.

If you still can’t find her, then you must look for eggs. Once you find them, look for a nice even pattern with no few gaps. Eggs should be plumb centre of the cell and there should be only one per cell. Sometimes a new queen takes a little time to get the hang of this but a queen that has overwintered should know what she is doing.

If there is a paucity of eggs, a ragged scatter, or cells with lots of eggs sprinkled about in them there is probably something wrong. The first two would be signs of a failing queen – she could be a drone layer or just plain ‘old’. The last is a sign of laying workers.

• If you see her – note ‘Q’
• If you see her but there are no eggs – note ‘QP’
• If you see her and she is laying well – note ‘QPL’

What you do about these predicaments is the subject of another post. But you should know when you need to do something.

Development

Is the colony building up as fast as, or faster than, the others?

If you record the number of frames with brood present at each visit you can see how each colony is progressing week on week. If you have more than one colony you can compare them – a weak one will stick out like a sore thumb and so will a strong one. Early in the season it is a good idea to equalise. The aim of this is to slow down a very strong colony and build up a weak one.

Equalising

Take a frame or even two frames of brood from a very strong colony and put it into a weak colony. Give the strong colony empty frames or stores in exchange.

Be careful:

• Only give sealed brood to a weak colony because they will not be strong enough to rear larvae;
• Don’t give more brood than they weak colony can keep warm.

Take a nuc

Another option when bees are too strong is to take a nuc.

Are there any queen cells?

Record whether or not there are queen cells and at what stage.

1. Play cells – small empty cups;
2. Queen cells with eggs in them;
3. Queen cells with larvae.

Once you have play cells you must make sure your bees have plenty of space.

When you have queen cells with eggs in them you should know that the next time you come – or perhaps the time after that – there will be queen cells with larvae.

When you find these you are into swarm control and that is not the subject of this post.

Are there any signs of disease?

At each visit remember remember remember to keep an eye out for signs of disease. If you catch it early you can control it. If you don’t… you can’t.

Record what you see. Devise a shorthand. One that makes sense to you.

More on bee diseases here.

Have they got enough stores?

This one’s easy – just record the number of frames of stores and keep an eye on the weather forecast and the available sources of nectar and pollen.

You may need to think about feeding – even in the midst of the Irish summer. Bear it in mind and consider your options.

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015. All Rights Reserved.

Click here for more information on the Native Irish Bee.

Here’s how and it isn’t difficult. In fact it’s fun and very rewarding – you will see real results year on year. We used to have some really horrible bees here and only a few hives of them but each year they would chase us round the garden. Now, in the middle of summer I have around 25 hives of bees here and stings are rare.

So make a start this year.

Colony Assessments

First you will need to record aspects of your bees behaviour for an entire season. You will need to record this data because you will not be able to remember it. Click here for a link to a downloadable Colony Assessment record sheet and some instructions.

Colony Appraisals

Once you are armed with a sheaf of these – all filled in from the previous year – you can sit, midwinter, by the fire manipulating your data and transferring it into your Appraisal Sheet. Click here for a link to a downloadable Colony Appraisal sheet and some instructions.This sheet compiles all of your seasonal data from the previous year and tabulates so you can  compare your colonies objectively. Here’s one of my completed Appraisal Sheets for last year (2014). Click it for a better view.

From Data to Action…

How you filter your data to pick out the best colonies to breed from and those to cull is up to you. Here’s what I do – nice and simple:

• Hightlight (yellow) all cells in the ‘cells’ column with an N in other words all the colonies which didn’t make queen cells.
• Then highlight (yellow) the top 10 or so cells of the Docility, Pattern and Total columns.
• You can then pick out the best 30% of your colonies – the ones with 3 or more highlighted cells per row – Pink
• Then the bottom 30-40% of your colonies – the ones with one or less highlighted cells – Blue
• Bring all of your breeder colonies to your breeder apiary
• Take all of the indifferent – neither blue nor pink – colonies to out-apiaries and requeen when your Apideas start to bear fruit;
• Cull all the queens in the blue highlighted colonies but don’t do this until you start to see drone brood. If you cull queens at this time you take advantage of all their brood and bees which you then unite with your breeder colonies. Take care when you do this and make sure to leave them queenless for a week and knock off every single queen cell before you unite over newspaper. Do not look at this as losing colonies of bees because you are not – in a very short while the very strong doubled-up colonies you have created will be ready to split – using the method of your choice and you are back where you started but without those horrible queens.
• Avoid inbreeding by either buying in a few native queens or alternatively take a few of your Apideas to another beekeeper to get mated and/or swap grafting material. Make sure you like his bees, and the cut of his jib, first though!

In addition – you will have favourite queens which may not feature highly in this scheme but there are things about them that you have noticed. If this is the case you should take special care to note where they are (record it on the assessment sheet) and how they do and don’t just cull them because they didn’t score high enough.

Drone Rearing

Have as many bees as possible in your home apiary so there are lots and lots and lots of drones. With luck, the place will be so drone-heavy your virgins will get caught on the way out and won’t go straying with the blithering Buckfast boys. As you know – apiary vicinity mating is a characteristic of the native bee: in this way they manage to get their queens mated in those short flashes of sunshine that occur during otherwise extensive periods of foul weather such as we experienced in the summer of 2012.

Get your drone rearers making drones about 5 weeks before you are due to start your first grafts. Do this by adding in drone frames late March, early April and FEED. In this part of the world it is customary to use two brood frames – each fitted with half a sheet of wax – the bees will draw out drone comb to fill the gap.  If you have frames that have holes in the bottom half but are otherwise good – cut the bottom half out with a stanley knife. Add them at each side of the brood nest – about 3 frames in from each side. If you are on double brood boxes add in two per box.

Some people put two super frames into the brood box and allow the bees to draw drone comb off the bottom bars of these but in my experience the bees don’t seem to know when to stop and attach the combs to the sides of the box which can leave you with a right mess.

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015. All Rights Reserved.

The sheet below has been designed to record both Colony Assessment Data and routine beekeeping information from each visit. Click it for a better view. Scroll down and I’ll walk you through it…

Alternatively click here to download the same sheet in Excel format

Here goes:

It starts with boxes to record the queen colour (and number, if you number your queens), the hive number and the location.

The first 5 columns are to record the answers to Hooper’s five questions which guide the beekeeper through what he or she should be looking for on each visit – namely:

• Do the bees have enough space? This is important for swarm prevention and swarm control;
• Is the queen present and is she laying?
• How many frames contain brood?
• Is there any sign of disease?
• Do the bees have enough stores?

Click here for more on Hooper’s 5 questions

The next 7 columns headed A-G are based on Colony Assessment Criteria devised by the Galtee Bee Breeding Group and these are to assess the quality of each colony. Each trait is marked out of 5 with 5 being the highest mark and 0 the lowest with the exception of Chalkbrood which is an undesirable trait – if there is a lot of chalkbrood the mark is 0 and if there is none the mark is 5.

• Docility – are the bees nice and docile or do they want to kill you and your smoker?
• Steadiness – are the bees steady on the comb or are they running about;
• Brood pattern – is the brood pattern solid and unbroken or is it erratic or pepperpot? Pepperpot brood can be a sign of American Foul Brood OR inbreeding;
• Pollen – have the bees got lots of pollen? The urge to amass lots of pollen is a sign that the bees will overwinter well and can sustain themselves through long periods of foul weather;
• Comb building – do the bees draw beautiful even honey comb or is it ragged and abstract?

If you wish, you can add columns to record blackness and chalkbrood.

• Blackness – are the bees nice and black? There can be varying amounts of orange bees in amongst their black sisters. This is a mark of how many orange drones were involved in the mating of the queen and as such is a measure of interbreeding with non-native bees. If there is a high percentage of orange bees, the queens (however black they themselves might be and however pure their origins) should be culled before they begin to produce drones.
• Chalkbrood. A lot of chalkbrood is a sign that the bees do not have Hygienic Behaviour in their DNA and as such will be less likely to detect Varroa in sealed brood.

At the end of the season – the data from the assessment sheets can be analysed and the results tabulated for appraisal and comparison using a Colony Appraisal Sheet. Click here for more on Honey Bee Colony Appraisal.

Click here for How to Use this Stuff to Improve your Bees

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015. All Rights Reserved.

Once upon a time I used to keep mice. They don’t swarm but they are territorial and they do fight. If you try to introduce two mice, of any or either sex, by simply dropping one into the cage of the other they will fight. However, if you put the two of them together in a third cage they will get along like a house on fire. This is what I call ‘the third box principle’ and the same thing applies with bees.

Before we go any further I should state that the Third Box Principle is not an explanation of bee behaviour but it is a mental model which helps the beekeeper to ‘put a handle’ on what is observed. It is also a particularly helpful thing to know when you are in the thick of the latest bee conundrum and wondering what the hell to do next – it can give you extra options.

Here are some useful things to do with it:

Nucs

This is great when making up nucs. As you know, for a nuc you need a queen, 3 frames with brood on, 1 frame of stores and 1 frame with lots of pollen on it. Using the third box principle you can take frames of bees, pollen and stores from 1, 2, 3 or even 4 hives of bees to put into the nuc and they won’t fight. If you are afraid they will then just hold two frames together and watch them. If you want to put a queen in then it is probably best if you take her and the frame she is on and put her to one side of the nuc and then put another frame of her bees and brood next to her. Then fill the nuc with bees from several different hives. This has never failed with me.

Queen Rearing

If you are into queen rearing and want a really strong colony for your cell rearer then you can take a spare hive or two out with you to your out-apiaries fill it/them with frames of bees and brood taken from each of your strongest hives. Just make sure you know where your queens are! You can then quietly unite these boxes of confused bees with your rearer hives using the newspaper method.

Re-queening

This can also be used in requeening – which can be ticklish enough. If you have your new queen in a nuc:

• Move the nuc to one side:
• Place an empty, full size box and floor in its place;
• Transfer all the frames from nuc to the back of the full size box;
• Fill the space with bees from another queenless hive or bees you have gathered as per the method above.

This will work also work with bees which have resorted to laying workers.

Apideas

You can also use it combine Apideas, say one with a laying queen and two that you have removed the queens from – 9 frames in all. In this case you’ll  need a fourth box: a fresh empty Apidea plus an empty Apidea super.

Do this on the site of the queen right Apidea.

• Move the queen-right Apidea to one side and put the fresh empty box in it’s place without the feeder;
• Load the 3 frames, including the queen into the fresh box then fill the   remaining two spaces (where the feeder isn’t) with two frames and the adhering bees from one of the queenless Apideas;
• Set the super (extension – whatdoyoucallit) in place and fill it with the remaining frames and bees from the queenless apideas;
• Spray any bees remaining in the apideas with water, gently tumble them into a corner and pour them into the new double decker;
• Put an empty frame in the remaining space;
• Walk away and don’t look back.

Test it

If you are in doubt about this – don’t take my word for it. It works with my  bees but it might not work with yours and there are always exceptions. So test it – get your third box and put a couple of frames into it from different hives – but not too close together – then watch as you push them towards each other…

And always be aware of where your queen/s is/are!

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2015. All Rights Reserved.

Oxalic acid is a very effective treatment for Varroa but only during broodless periods when the kill rate can be above 90%. When brood is present the kill rate is closer to 30% as most of the Varroa are in the brood where this acid cannot reach them. Click here for more on oxalic acid.

For this reason oxalic acid tends to be used during the mid-winter broodless period – if there is one!

However,  winter is not the only time bees are broodless and oxalic acid can also be used during summer broodless periods when the Varroa are phoretic (out and about on the bees).

Summer Treatment

Imagine a swarm…

Technically, that swarm is Varroa-free. Note I say ‘technically’ – because there are of course a few Varroa present attached to the flying bees but most are left behind sealed in the brood or creeping about on the comb and on the young bees.

This point accepted then you can deal with the other half when all the brood has hatched three weeks later. If you treat with oxalic acid at this time, before the new queen starts to lay, you can expect a spectacular knock-down of mites.

These conditions occur each time you allow a swarm to get away or when you perform an artificial swarm. An oxalic treatment can thus be incorporated into your artificial swarm routine at, or shortly after day 21. Click here for detailed artificial swarm instructions.

However, regard must be given to the possibility of honey contamination.

Taking Precautions

Oxalic acid is a natural constituent of honey. The concentration varies depending on the botanical origin of the honey but it is at levels that cause no harm to humans and experimental work has shown there is no significant increase in honey due to spring or summer oxalic acid Varroa treatment (Rademacher &Harz). And they must have had their supers on.

Now imagine your way through an artificial swarm…

After you have moved the original box to the opposite side and it loses that second cohort of flying bees it simply doesn’t have the ‘man-power’ to be putting anything into supers. It doesn’t need supers so move them to the parent stand at least for a couple of weeks until the new queen starts to lay. If it is short of stores in the meantime – feed it.

Because oxalic acid has hydrophylic or water-loving properties, it is thought unlikely to accumulate in wax either (Rademacher &Harz).

Trickle or Vaporise/ Sublimate?

I prefer the trickling method, especially for summer, as this allows you to tailor the dose according to the strength of the colony ie only trickle active seams of bees and if they are particularly weak give only 2mls of a 3.2% solution per seam instead of 5mls if they are strong. Click here for oxalic acid recipe.

It is less easy to tailor the dose if you are vaporising.

Snelgrove Boards

If, like me, you use Snelgrove boards then oxalic acid can be incorporated into methods 1 or 2 at day 21 as above but it might be an idea to temporarily cover the metal grille throughout the treatment.

Click here for Oxalic Acid for Beekeepers

Click here for Winter Oxalic Acid Treatment

Click here for more on Snelgrove

Click here for pictures and how to make your own Snelgrove board

Click here for Varroa Floor Flaw

Click here for recipes for both concentrations and instructions.

Click here for pictures and how to make your own Snelgrove board

Sources

Aliano, N. An Investigation of Techniques for using Oxalic Acid to reduce Varroa mite populations in Honey Bee Colonies and Package Bees. (2008) University of Nebraska

Nanetti, A., R. Büchler, J.D. Charrière, I. Fries, S. Helland, A. Imdorf, S. Korpela, and P. Kristiansen.  Oxalic acid treatments forVarroa control (Review). (2003) Apiacta 38: 81-87

Rademacher, E.R & Harz, M. Oxalic acid for the control of Varroosis in honey bee colonies – a review. (2006) Apidologie 37: 98–12

Rashid, M, Wagchoure, E.S., Mohsin, A.U., Raja, S., Sarwar, G. Control of Ectoparasitic Mite Varroa destructor in Honey Bee (Apis mellifera. L.) colonies by using different concentrations of Oxalic acid. (2012) Journal of Animal and Plant Sciences, 22(1): 72-76

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2014. All Rights Reserved.

Click here for ‘Bee Trees – Hawthorn‘

Here’s a photo of a hawthorn bee with pollen, click it for a better view

When there is this much honey from an early flow it’s best to take at least some of it off if only to spare the beekeeper’s back. Take only the sealed honey if possible, that way you’ll leave some for the bees in the June gap.

If, however, you suspect there may be rape in amongst it – you have no choice – you will have to take the lot off. If they have no feed below you should rapid feed a gallon or so of strong syrup but take the supers off first or they’ll put it in there.

Alternatively you could place a lump of fondant or better still Ambrosia (special bee fondant made with inverted sugar) over the feed hole. They won’t put this in the supers but if they need it – it’s there and it will also pull the bees straight up in to the supers which might help prevent overcrowding → swarming etc.

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2014. All Rights Reserved.

There are lots of things you can do to prepare for the swarming season – first of all set up a catcher or decoy hive.

Catcher or Decoy Hive

If there are bees looking in your windows at you – there is a swarm coming; those bees are scouts and they’re looking for a new home. They might be your bees or they might not – either way, if you haven’t already got your catcher hive out, do it now. Get an old brood box, the older the better because it will smell of bees. You’ll also need a floor and a roof of some description. Set it as high up as you can – perhaps on a shed roof or the top of a wall and if you have a choice – face it south or east, ideally in partial shade. Add a few horrible old frames, one or more of them containing old stores and you’re there. The scout bees will come looking – lured in by the smell of recent habitation – propolis, old frames and stores.  If they like it they may come back with a swarm in tow.

Better still – set out two or three battered old hives. You will likely attract two or three times the number of scouts and maximise your chances of catching a swarm.

Artificial Swarm

The artificial swarm is the most common way of dealing with a hive which is preparing to swarm but for it to be successful, the bees need to be quite well advanced along that road.

Ideally your hive will have cells which are close to being capped. If not it would be best if possible to leave them for another few days.

Equipment:

• A spare hive – floor, brood box, crown board and roof.
• A full complement of brood frames, preferably drawn or a mixture of  drawn comb and some with new foundation.
• A rapid feeder
• Strong syrup.

Method:

• Set up a hive stand 18 inches to one side of your parent stand;
• Place the floor on it;
• Take the old brood box (Box A) containing all the bees, cells, queen etc and move it to the new stand;
• Set the new brood box (Box B) on the original, or ‘parent’ stand and remove two frames from the centre of the box;
• Find your queen and place her and the frame she is on – minus any and all queen cells in the space in Box B;
• Go through Box B and remove any and all CAPPED CELLS only  BUT LEAVE THE REST ALONE;
• Add crown board and feeder with plenty of syrup whether or not you have given them foundation;
• Add roof and leave them alone for 7 days;
• All the flying bees from Box A will return to the queen in Box B who should now behave like a swarm and get on with their work;
• After 7 days you can either set up another stand 18 inches to the other side of the parent hive OR you can move them elsewhere within a couple of miles if that is more convenient – but no further away than that;
• Move the the entire hive containing Box A to that place;
• All the flying bees will leave Box A and join up with Box B and their old queen  and help filling the supers;
• Meanwhile Box A, finding themselves without flying bees will either take down all but one queen cell or they will allow the first emerged virgin to go round and do the job for them.
• If you have no faith in this, then interfere – but get it right. Select the best open cell at the start, when you take out the queen, and mark the place with a pin in the top bar of the frame then wait 7 days (when you move the box) before pruning the rest out.
• Either way they won’t swarm because they won’t have enough bees and eventually after another 3 weeks or so they will have a new queen laying.

If you don’t want another hive of bees you can remove the old queen to a nuc and unite Boxes A and B over a sheet of newpaper.

Click here for an Artificial Swarm diagram and/or Powerpoint presentation

Make a Nuc

You will need:

A 5 or 6 frame nuc;

5 or 6 frames;

Here’s what you do:

• Set the nuc close by, open it up and remove all the frames;
• Bung up the entrance with some foam;
• Find your queen and remove her on the frame she is found, minus any and all queen cells, and place her in the centre of the nuc;
• Go through the old hive and choose the best open queen cell – avoid any that are in amongst drone brood – DO NOT SHAKE THE FRAME OR YOU MAY DISLODGE THE LARVA;
• Mark the frame and the general location of the cell with a drawing pin;
• The reason for choosing the open cell is that you can be sure it is not a dud;
• Add another two frames of brood to the nuc preferably capped and not the one with the queen cell, one each side of the frame with the queen on it;
• Shake in a couple of frames of bees – do not shake the frame with the cell on it;
• Fill the space with two frames of stores preferably with plenty of pollen;
• Remove the nuc to an out apiary;
• If you don’t have one, make sure you shake in plenty of young bees then remove the foam and close the entrance loosely with some grass – if they have to remove it they will notice they have moved.

Early Split…

You can do this if there are no queen cells so long as you have brood on 8 or 9 frames. This is known as an early split and should be done between the last week in April and the first week in May before the swarming urge is initiated or even thought of. Instead the bees will just concentrate on queen replacement.

Follow the procedure laid out above disregarding the bit about queen cells.

• Always put the old queen into the nuc and not the other way round because a nuc is not strong enough and will make a poor ‘scrub’ queen.
• The main box will be strong enough to make a good new queen to take them through the season without swarming (!).
• Meanwhile you will soon be able to get the old queen and her colony out of the nuc into a full box with a super but they will be not be strong enough to think about swarming until very late in the year if at all (!)
• Between them, the two colonies will produce more honey than if you had left them together then had to perform some method of swarm control.

Click here for Swarm Prevention

Click here for an easy way to hive a swarm

Click here for First Swarm

Click here for Snelgrove’s wonderful book- Swarming; its Prevention and Control

Click here for how to make your own Snelgrove board

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2014.  All Rights Reserved.

Swarm prevention is what you do before you find cells with larvae in them. If you find cells with larvae in them – you’re into swarm control.

The causes for swarming are gone into in these posts:

• Bee Basics: the Colony
• Bee Basics: the Queen Bee
• Queen Substance
• Bee Basics: Pheromones

Swarm Prevention Measures

Space – Make sure the bees always have loads of space. If they are covering the top bars of the box when you remove the crown board you’re late! You should have had another super on there well before then. If you think about it, 2,000 bees per day are hatching at the height of the season so if you visit your bees once per week then 14,000 will have hatched since the last time you were there and another 14,000 will hatch before your next visit. Super before you need to. Super for bees and hope for honey.

Ventilation – is less of an issue if you are using mesh floors. If you are on solid floors – set your hive the ‘cold way’ for the summer ie frames perpendicular to the entrance and open the feed holes in the crown board.

Early splits – any hives with 9 frames of brood are ripe for splitting. If you do this before the middle of May there is a chance you could get a honey crop from both halves and neither half should swarm. That’s the theory.

Method

1. First make sure there are no queen cells;
2. Get a nuc box;
3. Add  the queen – on the frame she is found;
4. Two more frames of brood with adhering bees;
5. A frame of pollen;
6. A frame of stores;
7. Shake in a few more bees;
8. Strap it up and move to an out apiary.
9. The other half will now make queen cells and unless it is very strong it shouldn’t swarm.

Equalise – This is a very useful in that it slows down your strongest hives and speeds up the weak one. Equalising the stocks in an apiary and getting them all to the same stage at the same time makes it easier to manage them. Here’s what to do:

• Go to your weakest hives first and leave out a broodless frame from each of them;
• Then go to your strongest hives;
• Remove enough frames of emerging or capped brood to add to the weak ones;
• Shake off the bees;
• Add the emerging brood into the brood nests of the weak hives and add the broodless frames into the strong hives;
• DO NOT ADD FRAMES OF EGGS OR LARVAE TO WEAK HIVES – THEY WILL NOT BE STRONG ENOUGH TO REAR THEM;
• Don’t add more than one frame at a time – there probably won’t be enough bees to cover them and you’ll be looking at chilled brood on your next visit.

Demaree – For strong colonies with 9-11 frames of brood and no queen cells in one or two brood boxes. If the colony is in one box – you’ll need another one equipped with drawn combs and foundation plus stores.

• Find the queen and set her to one side in a nuc box, on the frame she was found;
• Make sure there are no queen cells anywhere;
• If the bees are in a double brood box, rearrange the frames so that most of the unsealed-est brood is in one box (box B) – if there is any left over, try and put the sealed-est brood in the other box (box A);
• Leave a space in the middle of box A;
• Put the frame with the queen on it into the middle of box A with the sealed brood which will soon hatch leaving more space for her to lay into;
• Rebuild as follows – floor, box A, queen excluder, supers, queen excluder, box B, crown board, roof;
• If the bees are in single box, put the new box of fresh combs (minus the middle one) on the floor as box A, put the queen on the frame she was found, into the space in the middle then rebuild as above.

Snelgrove – we’ll have to get back to that one…

The book is called Swarming: It’s Prevention and Control by L.E.Snelgrove

Click here for Swarm Control

Click here for how to Demaree

If all this fails – click here for an easy way to hive a swarm

Copyright © Beespoke.info, 2014.  All Rights Reserved.