I read in past posts that hives of queens raised from swarm cells will be much more swarmy than hives of queens raised from splits. In your experience, is that true?
NO, in my opinion, swarm cells produce the best queens of all.
Well, there might be some truth to it. After all, if you have bees that are very prone to swarming and you keep using them to make queens, you may end up with lots of swarmy bees. However, I doubt there is anything particular to swarm cells that would make the queens more swarm-prone.
Quote from: heaflaw on June 04, 2009, 11:21:01 PM
I read in past posts that hives of queens raised from swarm cells will be much more swarmy than hives of queens raised from splits. In your experience, is that true?
Swarming is just a natural tendency of bees. It's part of reproducing and survival of the species. I really don't think that queens that come from swarm cells will be more likely to swarm. All bees will get "swarmy" if they need to.
We, as beekeepers, just do all that we can to prevent it and if prevention doesn't happen perhaps we can be so lucky to catch the swarm... that would be fun too, if I ever get the chance!
>I read in past posts that hives of queens raised from swarm cells will be much more swarmy than hives of queens raised from splits. In your experience, is that true?
No. If you have a really swarmy hive (one that likes to swarm itself to death) then I might consider this an issue. But a normal hive swarming under normal conditions, I do not see that the results are swarmy bees.
swarm queens are planned queens, they are fed well, like said above a hive that swarms a lot is the hives you dont want, you can make any queen swarm a lot if you want them too. I think swarm queens are some of the best feed because they are planned. but planned by the beekeeper and well feed grafted queens are the best also ;).