Artificial Swarm
A beekeeping miracle happened this week- the beekeepers and the bees had not only read the same book they were on the same page!
Last week our green hive was full of bees, the queen is last years and she lays like a trooper. There was a lot of brood and they were filling the super with honey. During the inspection it was clear the queen didn't have much room left to lay, there were no queen cups but the queen was moving pretty quick across the frames. Before swarming they slim the queen down which means she can move faster and fly easily. We made the prediction that swarming was on the cards and decided we would perform an artificial swarm. I'm one for telling the bees our plans in the hope they'll listen and go along with it, so we decided we'd come back in 5 days hopefully find a charged queen cell and do the artificial swarm.
So we went back today and they listened- they had made not one but 2 queen cells with a tiny egg in the bottom ready to be fed royal jelly, we were ready to try the artificial swarm! Now I'm not expert and will fully admit last year this failed as we'd left it to late, I was also on my own and lifting the hive was heavy and hard work but here are the steps we followed.
-move parent hive 2-3m to the side of the original site
-one the original site place a new brood box with new frames and foundation (minus one frame)
-go through the parent hive and locate the queen, place her and a frame of brood into the new box, replace the supers and reassemble. It is really important that this frame has NO queen cells on otherwise you'll just create a swarm
-in the parent hive go through and destroy all but one charged open queen cell, add the spare frame of foundation to make up for the frame you took, reassemble
In doing this the flying bees and the queen are separated from the brood. The hope is that parent hive raises the queen cell, she hatches, mates and starts laying. The new hive draws out the foundation, the queen can go on laying and the world returns to normal and we have 3 colonies not 2!
Last week our green hive was full of bees, the queen is last years and she lays like a trooper. There was a lot of brood and they were filling the super with honey. During the inspection it was clear the queen didn't have much room left to lay, there were no queen cups but the queen was moving pretty quick across the frames. Before swarming they slim the queen down which means she can move faster and fly easily. We made the prediction that swarming was on the cards and decided we would perform an artificial swarm. I'm one for telling the bees our plans in the hope they'll listen and go along with it, so we decided we'd come back in 5 days hopefully find a charged queen cell and do the artificial swarm.
So we went back today and they listened- they had made not one but 2 queen cells with a tiny egg in the bottom ready to be fed royal jelly, we were ready to try the artificial swarm! Now I'm not expert and will fully admit last year this failed as we'd left it to late, I was also on my own and lifting the hive was heavy and hard work but here are the steps we followed.
 |
| after the artificial swarm, the green hive is the parent hive and the white the new |
-move parent hive 2-3m to the side of the original site
-one the original site place a new brood box with new frames and foundation (minus one frame)
-go through the parent hive and locate the queen, place her and a frame of brood into the new box, replace the supers and reassemble. It is really important that this frame has NO queen cells on otherwise you'll just create a swarm
-in the parent hive go through and destroy all but one charged open queen cell, add the spare frame of foundation to make up for the frame you took, reassemble
 |
| the flying bees returning to their new brood box |
In doing this the flying bees and the queen are separated from the brood. The hope is that parent hive raises the queen cell, she hatches, mates and starts laying. The new hive draws out the foundation, the queen can go on laying and the world returns to normal and we have 3 colonies not 2!
Comments
Post a Comment