help me with swarm prevention

[debay]

Im a newb and as green as it gets. My first package of bees is coming in about 2 weeks and Im stoked. Ive been absorbing every nugget of wisdom I can find and one area has me scratching my head a little. I only want 2 hives. If my first group of bees live to next season, ill order a new queen and split my first hive into a TBH. My question is this, if I dont want anymore beehives after this, whats the best swarm management after that? My thoughts were to have a few extra frames of drawn out comb on standby and when the time comes take out a  brood comb or two at a time during swarm season, scrape the caps, store it, and rotate it out for the next time. Is that within the realm of beekeeping ethics? i hate to kill the bees needlessly, but then I dont want to lose my investment and right now I dont want to expand. It seems that if I want to keep my hives, harvest honey, and have swarm free bees, this may be my only choice. But then, Im a newb, so Im asking for advice.

i guess for you guys to know how to better answer that you need to know where I am. I live on the east coast of NC (USA). We have relatively mild winters with a few short blasts of sub freezing temps but not many and none for any duration. Snow is a rarity. We have all sorts of different trees and flowers in bloom during the late fall and early spring, so nectar flow is never totally off.

[Michael Bush]

Keep the brood nest open:
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesswarmcontrol.htm

If you end up doing any splits, recombine just before the flow.

You need at least two hives to have the resources to deal with possible queenlessness, laying workers etc.

I'd have three hives.  Two to keep. One to catch swarms or do temporary swarm control splits.

[debay]

quote from the artile you linked me to---- "you can put some empty frames in the brood nest. Yes, empty. No foundation. Nothing. Just an empty frame. Just one here and there with two frames of brood between. In other words, you can do something like: BBEBBEBBEB where B is brood comb and E is an empty frame. How many you insert depends on how strong the cluster is. They have to fill all those gaps with bees. The gaps fill with the unemployed nurse bees who begin festooning and building comb. The queen will find the new comb and about the time they get about ¼" deep, the queen will lay in them. You have now "opened up the brood nest"."

it sounds like opening the brood nest is what Im considering. I guess my biggest question is what to do with the brood cells I remove. When my hive reaches productivity I will have two deep supers for the brood, an excluder, and two shallow supers for honey. Maybe Im being a bone head about this, but I dont want my hive to get much bigger than this. I keep seeing that I should toss on another super to help make room for more brood. Thats going to be great for them, but that means more supers for honey. Whats wrong with that? nothing except Im not interested in a 5 foot stack of supers and 100 lbs of honey. for now anyway. I want to keep a modest sized hive with a modest production. I see your point Mr. Bush about having two hives and enough extra equipment to handle splits. I just feel like if I do that Ill end up being stuck with that split and having more hives than I want to deal with. My goals are simple right now- #1 establish a healthy hive (I do plan on having at least two and if I hadnt of learned the value of that so late, I would have ordered two sets to begin with. It was hard enough to get a queen this late as it was) #2- maintain a healthy hive #3- If things go well harvest some honey for personal use #4- learn about bees and ENJOY them #5- keeping it simple and fun.

back to opening the brood nest, if I remove frames of brood, shake or brush the bees off to insure that I dont pull the queen and simply replace that frame Im not going to ruin my hive or break some cardinal rule am I? Like I said maybe Im just a bonehead and have case of rooky-itis, I just want to make sure Im ready when the time comes.

[Michael Bush]

>it sounds like opening the brood nest is what Im considering. I guess my biggest question is what to do with the brood cells I remove.

You don't remove them.  You just move them somewhere else.  If there are combs of honey, pollen or empty, move those somewhere else and spread out the brood and put in the empty frames.  If there is nothing but brood, then move the brood up a box and put in the empty frames.  If you have deeps and not all the same size boxes, then you might have to harvest some honey to make room or buy another deep. (or change over to all mediums :)  )


>  When my hive reaches productivity I will have two deep supers for the brood, an excluder, and two shallow supers for honey. Maybe Im being a bone head about this, but I dont want my hive to get much bigger than this.

If you want honey, you want the hive to get as big as possible.  A bigger hive makes three to four or even five times as much honey as one half that size.

> I keep seeing that I should toss on another super to help make room for more brood. Thats going to be great for them, but that means more supers for honey. Whats wrong with that? nothing except Im not interested in a 5 foot stack of supers and 100 lbs of honey.

A really productive hive will be an eight foot stack of 300 pounds of honey.

> for now anyway. I want to keep a modest sized hive with a modest production.

So you just want pets?  Then they will swarm, and you probably should just let them.

> I see your point Mr. Bush about having two hives and enough extra equipment to handle splits. I just feel like if I do that Ill end up being stuck with that split and having more hives than I want to deal with.

You can always combine later and get more honey.  You can always trade bees for honey by doing a combine just before the main flow.  You can also combine weak hives in the fall and spring.  Getting less hives is a simple process.

>back to opening the brood nest, if I remove frames of brood, shake or brush the bees off to insure that I dont pull the queen and simply replace that frame Im not going to ruin my hive or break some cardinal rule am I?

Like what?  I wouldn't remove brood unless you have chickens to feed it to.  It's kind of a waste.  If you plan to get rid of brood, then put drone foundation in and remove the drones two weeks later and freeze them.  That will set the bees AND the Varroa back.