Ok, I checked a hive yesterday that I knew was getting a little crowded. BOY WAS I WRONG! They were Really crowded. Three medium supers full of brood and bees. I destroyed about 20 capped queen cells. (Half on accident pulling boxes part. :-\) I have a few questions for those on here that know a Lot more than me!
I started to remove frames with swarm cells and started nucs with them with additional frames of brood/bees in various stages. I also gave each a frame of honey/pollen. I replaced the frames with drawn comb and tried to skip frames in the brood box. I went through all the frames and either removed the frames with queen cells or destroyed (once I ran out of boxes) the rest. I placed a medium super full of drawn comb between the second medium and third. The third had some brood, but most was removed to make nucs. The existing queen has a great brood pattern. All of the queen cells were large and capped.
My question: Will this be enough generally to stop them from swarming or did I really screw things up by breaking them apart and replacing with empty comb?
Will I need to add frames of brood to the nucs I created to bolster them while waiting for the queen to start laying?
Thank you in advance for the info!
:evil:you are making them work again before they swarm again. Keep watching they might try making more queens. I think you did the right thing. you now have more hives without having to watch them swarm and catch the swarms. plus the bees didn't take all the honey from the hive that they would have taken with the swarm. :) :)
I was hoping to make them work rebuilding until swarm season has passed.
Might have . The nucs w/ quen cells, just make sure the frames on both sides of queen cells are drawn and enough bees are in each nuc to keep cells warm.Also be aware they may have already swarmed given the number of queen cells.
make sure you have a queen in the original hive. You should always find a queen before you move or destroy queen cells.
Jim
I thought of that, but my stupid smoker wouldn't stay lit and I had a ton of angry bees around me. Didn't want to take the time to search. Oh, and did I mention that I was 10 minutes late to pick up my children from school! WhAT A MoNDay!
Quote from: Hill's Hivery on May 14, 2008, 03:37:19 PM
I thought of that, but my stupid smoker wouldn't stay lit and I had a ton of angry bees around me. Didn't want to take the time to search. Oh, and did I mention that I was 10 minutes late to pick up my children from school! WhAT A MoNDay!
Hopefully you put the queen into one of your splits. If not it is still possible for them to continue to try and swarm, although breaking it down into several nucs and putting in new frames so they have to rebuild the brood nest should kill the swarm instinct for the year.