Swarm Catch #6 & Apiary Update
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- Catching an aggravating and difficult swarm, plus closeup macro footage of a queen with a problematic laying pattern. Going through boxes to see if hives need space. Lots in this video, I think it's a good one. Enjoy!
My swarm trapping series....if you haven't seen it, it is worth a watch.
• Swarm Trapping Honeybees
Link to my Amazon Store, with products I recommend:
www.amazon.com/shop/duckriverhoney
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I enjoy your videos, very informative. Im in my first year and I've gone a simular route you have to keep things simple. You use all medium boxes and frames, I use all deeps including my long langs. I recently aquired a bunch of free boxes just to haul them off. From that 4x14 trailer I was able to cobble together or repair 48 good boxes. Also around 100 good frames, most went on the burn pile along with about 1/2 the boxes. There were a few shallows and mediums mixed in, those I'll combine with a deep box for swarm traps. I've kept my 2 colonies through one of the worst Somers I've seen in many years alive. According to the man who's teaching me they are in good shape going into winter. He wasn't too enthusiastic about the long Lang hives but he's starting to like them. I decided on long hives because of I'm 57 with a bad back. Plan is to increase to around 10 hives I. The coming year. Wish me luck and the best of luck to you.
Hello from New Zealand, Try holding a frame of foundation up to the swarm and see if they’ll walk onto it, if they do you have a good chance of spotting the queen, once frame has lots of bees put it in the hive and do it again with another and so on until you have most of them.
👍
Sometimes you can put a drawn out comb up under them and they will climb onto it.
Yep, hopefully next year I’ll have surplus comb, but I’m out now.
Laying worker hive.definatly need fix that
I enjoy watching your videos and other people's also. 49 years ago when I was 11 a local beekeeper helped me catch my first swarm. I had several hives until I was 18 and I was planning on making it my career. Unfortunately my body had other plans and I carry an epipen.
Some things have changed but most is still the same.
Thanks, and sorry for your allergy. I've read that hobby beekeepers are at most risk for developing a serious allergy because we get stung more than most people, but not every day. It's interesting that the people most likely to have a severe allergy are the family members of commercial beekeepers. They're coming into contact with bees and bee venom on clothing almost daily, but not getting stung, so they get allergic.
Great camera work showing the multiple eggs in cells, that happened to me last year. Before long I had a lot of drone cells. Good luck.
Thanks!
Thanks for all the info. I have just trapped my first nuke and am getting excited about bee keeping. I’m using the bees for
Pollinating my crops. All good!!!
Thanks Mark, good luck!
Your swarms can enjoy the fruit of all your labor on all those boxes you painted awhile back; they look great. Awesome video, thanks for posting, Nathan.
Thanks!
Please keep us updated on these hives. Get well fast.
Will do, thanks!
Not sure if you had a laying worker hive. However when I have what I think is a LW, I take a single sheet of #8 screen and place it on top of a queen right hive. Then put the LW hive on top of it. If the QR hive is significantly smaller than the LW I put the whole stack in the spot where the LW hive was. This will cause the field bees in the LW hive to beef up the QR when they return.
The single screen keeps the bees apart but they can exchange mandibular pheromone and the brood pheromone from the lower hive will suppress the LW.
Also if there was a viable but young queen that is laying multiple eggs, then that will allow her to live and keep going.
After a couple weeks check the LW part of the composite hive. If there is worker brood, move it off to it's own as it's queen right. If not then just remove the screen and combine. They will get along and low chance of fighting or losing a queen.
FWIW...
Thanks, I fear I’d forget the screen. Putting a LW on top of a strong colony sorts it out as well.
Awesome Video Neighbor
Thanks!
When I'm dealing with a swarm stuck around the trunk of a tree, I will spray them lightly with 1:1 sugar syrup to keep them from being able to fly as well while I'm attempting to brush them into my bucket. Good luck with your swarm catching!
Nice tip thanks!
@@DuckRiverHoney You are very welcome! 👩🌾🐝🍯
That queen was huge! Almost looked like a hornet LOL! Beautiful. Enjoying your channel and your swarm catches!
Thanks! Yeah, she’s a good looking queen. I love small swarms because it’s so easy to find the queen and see the development.
Thanks! Yeah, she’s a good looking queen. I love small swarms because it’s so easy to find the queen and see the development.
Nathan,
I appreciate all of the information that you provide in your videos. That was truly an interesting swarm capture.
Thank you for sharing your experience, expertise and knowledge about beekeeping. Keep up the good work.
Glad to know that everyone is doing well.
Thanks!
@@DuckRiverHoney Nathan, You have the personality and style of presentation which is great for TH-cam. If you can come up with a catchy slogan for your channel like some of the other beekeepers, then it will help your views and subscriptions. I caught a hint at one when you said, "I've got a busy bee day" at the beginning of this video. Not saying that is it but be creative and run with your own slogan.
I borrowed from my 92 yo father - "Live life as if you will die tomorrow and learn as if you will live forever!
Thanks!
You need to find the Queen!
Hard to do in that hive!
Always prevent queen from leaving box for at least a few days so bees accept the box. Where I’m at 49 out of 50 swarms will abscond from box the next day after first all happily marching into the box the evening before.
I have good luck finding queens by dumping bulk of swarm into bucket and using flashlight and keeping bucket in the shade during the search. If swarm is massive I dump the bees into a mortar mixing tub so bees have a lot more room to spread out which makes finding the queen much easier for large swarms.
Good tips! I’m at 100% acceptance on the box IF I feed them immediately. I think they like it better if they have some drawn comb as well. That may change over a bigger sample size.
@@DuckRiverHoney - As always doing what works for you is a great guiding principle. For me, giving swarms feed or nectar frames results in bees first ingesting the nectar THEN absconding, lol. They show me they’re smart yet still are the ones that decide where they live, not I.
Thank You for the videos! And the suggestion of using mediums. Sure will be easier to manage when I retire in less than 10 years.
Thanks! All mediums makes a lot of sense for me. I suspect it makes sense for a lot of people.
You needed to get that tarp around the trunk of the tree and get that hive body directly underneath where you’re shaking . A frame of brood would help bring them in fast.
Thanks, I got it as around the tree as possible without the hassle of removing the cage. A frame of brood would hold them for sure, but I didn’t want to rob one from a honey colony.
first check the swarm on the tree and see if you can find the queen before you shake them. when you shake the tree just do a quick check in the bucket to see if you have the queen. if you do then catch her in a clip and place her in the hive. the bees will follow. each time you shake the tree you risk damaging the queen so secure her in a clip first then shake the rest of the hive.
I looked for the queen a lot and never found her until the next morning, then they moved right in. I always try to find the queen if I can.
Great video buddy thanks for sharing I would say that one hive is queen less and you have a laying worker in it. I had one like this last year here at my place.
Yep, I’ll probably sort them out tomorrow and do a video just on that hive.
You definitely got a laying working bee . It is very rear to have queen lay multiple eggs ... You'll be best to check all the frames for a queen . If there isn't a queen shake all the frames out side a few feet away from the box to get rid of the laying worker bee , the rest of the bees will return to the box and then put a frame of egg so they can produce a new queen cells .. That's what i do to my box if i have a laying worker .... Cheer from down under ..
Thanks! I already shook them out and combined with a stronger hive.
Newly subscribed and really enjoying your journey.
Awesome, thanks!
Good info! Keep it up. I tested out the honey dome frames, rotating, and a couple other techniques as well as some other techniques practice and none of them were going to stop nature. I know you have mentioned your management style is to catch the swarms, but I would encourage you to harvest swarm cells and there are some great small batch queen rearing/grafting that you could use to expand much more rapidly and with less bees in the trees. Even my resource hives were healthy enough to swarm and all of that hits the honey production bottom line pretty hard. I’m convinced the only way to really halt it is to move all queens the first and second week of April and let them supercede, or replace with a grafted queen to maintain all your bee power. Sorry for the rambling wawa coffee got me
Take a look at Carter Hill Honeybees. He’s running Walt Wrights Nectar Management and doing well with it. I think he’s got 80-90% success at preventing swarms and averaging ~120 lbs per hive on production colonies. That is what I’m building toward. This year is increase hive counts and build as much comb as possible. Next year I’ll run the plan as I want to and then start weeding through genetics.
Duck River Honey I had never seen that channel, great info!
No worries. Randal is a very sharp.
Any thoughts on including pollen sub patties on caught swarms? Or boosting new swarms with equalizing frames?
Not to suggest anything but I get a kick out of folks that have their swarm buckets on long poles.
The march in never gets old.
We've got so much pollen available right now I don't think sub would do much except possibly give small hive beetles a head start. Boosting swarms with equalizing frames....yes, you could boost the smaller ones, but you'd need nurse bees as well. My thought is this....the really big swarms I got from my own colonies MAY be strong enough to make some honey this year. A couple of them have nearly drawn out three mediums, and the main flow is still ahead. The smaller swarms, no way they'll make honey. So I don't want to rob from the strong that could make honey to give to the weak that won't be able to. I'd rather let them build on their own. Not equalizing also gives me a very clean judgement on the quality of the queen.
@@DuckRiverHoney "quality of the queen" thanks, great point!
Ya need to lay eye on queen if not you have a laying worker or drone laying queen . Would not wait a week take action now
got my 1st swarm in red bud tree yesterday
Awesome, fun stuff!
You wouldn't have the queen cells if there was a laying worker - I believe
They’ll do strange things when queenless.
Each Keeper has their own ways and each of us live in many areas in the States that differ. Like me i live upper mid west. I use all deeps and till this year after a drunk driver hit me i kept 25 hives. This year a local Farmer i now mentor has taken over my hives and we went to 6 frame deeps for mating nukes and next saturday will be putting in second round of cells after we split the hives for second time this season. how you use cap and ladder i use gallon buckets and i dont use inner covers. My tops are flat with a 3/8 inch area for feeding patties when i need to do so. All my boxs are wax dipped also. The 1 hive that showed all those eggs says laying worker. easy way to rid that i have used is to split frames from the hive to Queen right hives. They will kill the laying worker and problem solved. Best of luck this year.
Thanks, and good luck and good health to you!
You have a laying worker in that hive, laying workers start from being queenless to long, laying worker lay multiple eggs in one cell
Immature queens can do the same but it straightens out usually. In this case I’m 99% sure I have a laying worker. The hive is LAZY. They haven’t drawn any more comb in the last couple weeks. They’re just about to get shook out and combined with a strong hive.
@@DuckRiverHoney i only seen a video on the comb caged method it looked promising to try it if i ever need to so forget whos video it was but it is worth giving it a try and to learn from if the method works or not
@@andrewklahold2880 Bob Bonnie shows that method in one of his videos. He’s using it to introduce a $1,000 breeder queen.
@@DuckRiverHoney
Is it " Bob Binnie" ?
It’s in this video. th-cam.com/video/eHKD94TW2p0/w-d-xo.html
Multiple eggs in the bottom? Emergency cells but you did not say they had eggs in them? Virgin may not have returned from mating flight??? A single medium box would make me look for the queen.
Find your Queen....now....that’s a laying worker...get them a Queen....or combine them....put a frame of brood in there....
I’ll deal with them today.
Thank you for your work. I am wondering if you have a strategy for treating a swarm that may not have come from one of your colonies for varroa mites once they are in a hive.
“A” answer is wait till they have open brood and treat with OAV. My answer is to wait till July when I gear up to treat every colony, and treat every colony at that time.
yes we all know that you have a laying worker. first thing to do is find out if you even have a queen in there. if not then requeen them fast. so you reduce your losses when the flow happens. you are already behind because they have this laying worker issue. a mated queen will sort this issue right away and get the hive back on track. if you do have a queen then she is not doing her job and needs to be despatched. you should not wait. do it now.
Thanks, I sorted them yesterday.
So many newby moves
Thanks, I’d love to learn from a beekeeper such as yourself who knows it all. What exactly did you see that I could do better?
At around 7:41 I noticed that a bee has an varoa mite between thorax and abdomen.
I didn’t notice one?
I'd like to see what they cap the cells as (drone or worker). Wait the week and see.
They’re extending them into drone cells. I sorted that hive this afternoon. Video will post sometime this week hopefully.
got the queen so should be better this morning.
Finding the queen makes a lot of things better!
Make a fake tree that has one of those door hinges on it.
Cut the other two to a nub.
I’ve thought about putting up a Russian scion for next year.
Oh and laying works can only make drones
Yep
A Russian scion might help keep the bees from swarming to those pear trees.
I may try one next year by the pond. The trees out there are willows overhanging the water, so swarms will be much harder or impossible to get down if they’re over water.
There is two ways to resolve laying worker take and dump all the bees 50 yrds from hive a end the hive or you can take a frame of comb empty and take 1/8 inch wire make a cage box the size of one side of comb frame and out a queen in the so that the bees can get to her or they will kill her once she is in the caged frame comb she will lay and in a few weeks the will run out the laying worker takes about 21 days to get rid of laying worker
I’m not in the habit of putting hives on life support. I try to cull the weak and promote the strong.
Shaken our
They’ll be dealt with soon.