Swarms

[Brooklyn]

This will be my first year of bee keeping and I hear a lot about bees swarming. Why don't you put something like a queen excluder at the entrance so the queen does not get out. Will that stop the swarm?

What do you do to try and stop a swarm ? Or is that something that will always happen?
Brooklyn

[iddee]

There are things you can do reduce the chance of it happening, but there is no way to prevent it totally. Swarming is the natural way to increase the number of hives and nothing will stop it completely. You can create an "artificial" swarm thus stopping your bees from leaving. You can make splits, requeen the hive, and many other steps to prevent it, sometimes successful, sometimes not.

[JP]

Most on here don't like using excluders (includers in your case) I have never used them. Queens will be thinned down before swarming and I believe at that point they can get through, as would a virgin.


...JP

[Michael Bush]

If you put an excluder on the entrance (a device invented, and popularized by Henry Alley and still available from some supply houses as "entrance guard") then the two down sides are, the drones cannot get out, which causes a traffic jam as they get stuck in the excluder material and die, and a virgin queen can't get out to mate.  Also, the drones, if you let them out, can't get back in, triggering the bees to rear more drones.

[jojoroxx]

Queen excluders are for cooling cookies on, i thought... :roll:

[annette]

Queen excluders are for cooling cookies on, i thought... :roll:

What a great idea as I look at the 2 I bought and never used

[harvey]

I use my queen excluder for cooling sausages after they are done in the smoke house

[Michael Bush]

>What do you do to try and stop a swarm ?

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm