What are your thoughts on what is going on here?
Saturday 19 Feb--create split. Took 4 frames from strong hive and put in 10 frame brood box. Set new box where old hive was located and shook in extra bees.
Saturday 26 Feb--Checked the box and it had capped queen cell(s). Thought I would wait until 19 March to inspect new queen and eggs being laid.
Today, day 15-16 they swarmed. I would think the new queen would just now be going out on mating flights. But, they swarmed. BTW, This is the first split I have done.
Any thoughts?
Andy
Rule #1 These are bees they don't follow the rules all the time. I would have thought giving as much space as you did along with no queen would have curbed any urge to swarm. Were the 6 frames you added to the 10 frame brood box drawn out? If not the bees may have all stayed on the drawn frames and long with the additional shaken in bees may have felt too crowded. If they were drawn frames...review rule #1. Not sure what else to tell you. Did you at least get the swarm?
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Last summer my hives tried to swarm badly. I cut the swarming fever with false swarms. It is one kind of split.
Those colonies which I put in foundation box, stopped all swarming.
Couple of hives which I put on drawn empty combs, continued swarm cell rearing.
When I had Carniolan bees it was hard to stop their swarming fever.
How to do false flying swarm:
move hive 10 feet
put in old site a new hive and there
- one frame of brood with bees,
- the queen,
- one or two food frame
- and the rest foundations
Part of bees fly to the old hive site during next days.
You may connect mite killing in that false swarming system
Finski, are you now only using Italians?
Did you stop using Carniolans because they are more prone to swarm or for other reasons?
Quote from: BlueBee on March 08, 2011, 03:45:24 PM
Finski, are you now only using Italians?
Did you stop using Carniolans because they are more prone to swarm or for other reasons?
I have now Italians from 3 different origin from Finland.
Carniolans are good but they were earger to swarm just that time when they should lay foragers to main yield.
I have now swarmy Italians but they swarm so late that it has not much effect on main yield.
I try to find nonswarmy stocks. It is not easy because many stocks have tendency to chalk brood.
I just like compare different strains.
.
.
The swarm is still about 25 feet in the air on a limb. I used a bucket to get a swarm last year up there but I don't think I'm even going to try to get them. I think there was plenty of drawn comb. My main purpose in creating these splits was not to make more hives. That was supposed to be just a side benefit. I mainly wanted to rotate some new foundation in the brood boxes so they would have plenty of space this spring and maybe not swarm so bad like they did last year.
I've got 2 more splits made from 5 frame nuc boxes so I guess I'll see if they take off.
Thanks for the comments.
Andy
Put a bait box out if you have one. Add a frame of drawn comb if you have it. They should move in I would think if they have not come close to picking out a spot already. Its worth a try.
Can you rope a Box up near them I'm thinking if you can, put a Leading rope so you have one hanging it,
One holding it from below,If you can after its up there get the bees moving with a Pole or something
Just to disturb a few maybe they will re-establish in your box?
Remember I am a Green horn so take my thought with a grain of salt
Tommyt
Andy; From the timeline described it sounds like there was already a viable queen on one of the frames used to split, not sure though, because its not clear which super is being talked about or whether a new queen was introduced or was 'supposed' to be raising their own????
Andy should explain this situation clearly for a better answer. Very curious that the colony would swarm (?) after 15 days. Perhaps it was absconding instead and NOT a swarm?
Definately put out some bait/swarm boxes.
thomas
Sorry for the confusion I should have explained better. The new split was making their own queen. That's why it is pretty confusing to me since they swarmed on the 15-16th day after I made the split. Hence the queen should have just come out. I looked inside the new box last evening and it still has lots of bees. I didn't stay inside long enough to try to find a queen.
The swarm was still in the tree when I left for work this morning but it's too high up to mess with. I captured a swarm last year about 10 feet lower then this one is and it was a real pain. I did it by throwing a rock with a rope over the limb and hoisting a 5 gallon bucket underneath and then jerking the limb and they dropped in the bucket.
I did put out a nuc box with drawn comb and phermone.
Andy
Have you checked the mother colony? It may be queenless.
thomas
Just thinking out loud here. If you are in to catching swarms are you catching bees that like to swarm?
I haven't checked the original colony but my wife watched them swarm and she says they came out of the new box.
I don't have carniolans so I don't think I have unusually pro swarming bees. But, last year I had several swarms and I think the main reason was lack of room in the brood box. I hadn't rotated any new foundation in the single deep brood boxes for about 3 years. So, I thought this year I will just rotate new foundation in and create splits with the frames I take out.
Andy
Swarm prevention is like human celibacy, nearly impossible to accomplish.
I still think your original colony may be queenless.
thomas
I did a split last year, put it in a nuc, they drew 2-3 queen cells, then swarmed. Caught the swarm, they had a queen, the nuc also had a queen. My theory is that with multiple queen cells they swarmed wtih one of the virgins.
Mike
Quote from: Acebird on March 09, 2011, 01:02:28 PM
Just thinking out loud here. If you are in to catching swarms are you catching bees that like to swarm?
;) YEP
Sounds like you did a good job. Hopefully they will go to a lure for you.
Sometimes, if a swarm has more than one queen, it will through another swarm after a few days of being hived.
I think they did swarm because of multiple queens in the split. I captured one swarm so from 1 hive I now have 3. I hope they stay put.
Andy