Queen Excluders and Hope - Dealing with swarm cells in a large colony - 9/6/24
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 พ.ย. 2024
- Hello everyone,
I've decided to try to do two videos every Thursday now.
One will be of long form inspections, so those of you who are interested can see how my bees are doing on a weekly basis.
The other will be if anything interesting happens like in this one.
One of my biggest colonies seems to have reached critical mass and has decided to make queen cells. The swarm response is triggered by a few things, but the main reason is that they've run out of space for brood or food. I try to combat this response, especially in spring, by not using a queen excluder and keeping well ahead of the colony with extra boxes of comb.
Sometimes, a colony will decide its time to swarm if the nectar flow stops and the foragers who are normally out collecting nectar and pollen get a bit bored milling about the hive. Or if they reach a "critical mass" where they reach a large size and decide there's enough bees that they think the colony won't miss half of them flying off over the horizon with the queen.
Either way, the fix for this problem comes down to needing to find the queen in several boxes, so this video is of how I deal with this situation.
I hope you enjoy it. If you do, then please think about subscribing to my page.
Hope you're all safe and well,
Greg
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I’ve been beekeeping 25 years 150 hives and I’ve never split hives when finding Queen cells I just take the queen cells down and next week do the same thing again and the next week do the same thing again and never swarm only difference after you find them you have to go in earlier. You have to go in every four or five days because the second time they make cells, they will make them from three day old larva so sealed in five days if I can’t get back, I will take the queen out and leave one queen cell with a queen excluder under the brood box but not a wire one then take the Queen excluder out a week later. My experience Queens that run out of semen sperm never get super seeded. You always end up with the drone laying queen. All good fun.😊
Thank you for your input. It's always interesting to see how another beekeeper manages similar situations.
Nice trick as never thought of that but then again I have yet to get huge colonies like yours...but good to know
I found it much easier than demaree splits to stop my hives from swarming. Only need to look for swarm cells when you find one in the brood areas. They're usually better than this one.
Hey there! How are u satisfied with your bee suit? It looks fantastic!
Honestly, it's ace. It's from simon the beekeeper. I usually use it for guests on experience days. My normal one is damaged currently. That is an old castle farm one which is also excellent.
Only problem is that they're not really flattering for the old dad bod gut😂😂
@@MystTreeHoney Thanks for honest review. I spoke with them about shipping it to my country but the customer service is awful. Hope they fix it.
That's a massive shame. I hope so too bud