Observations on Swarming and Hive Manipulation

[Kris^]

This spring I had 4 hives that overwintered: 1, 2, 3, and 4.  Hives 2, 3, and 4 were strong going into the end of February, #1 was almost dead.  I placed it into a 5 frame nuc and fed in frames of brood from the other hives on a regular basis, and by the end of May it was bearding at night.  I did no manipulations to the hive, other than putting a super on.  But June 9th, it had filled the super with honey and had swarmed.  It's still very strong with queen cells erupting.

Hive 2 was the strongest coming out of winter.  I put a super on, but did no manipulations and, in fact, refrained from doing a major inspection until the beginning of May.  When I did, I found over a dozen swarm cells, most of which I destroyed (accidentally) and several others which I put into a 5 frame nuc.  I added another super, too.  The hive swarmed that evening (which I caught and rehived separately) so I returned the swarm cells to the hive.  I saw a virgin queen a week later.  The hive has since gone queenless, and they  are making queen cells from young brood I put into the hive.

I split hive 3 in March, dividing up brood and frames evenly among the two hives.  The queen went to #5.  #3 took a while to raise a queen, but now is a full two boxes with a super it is filling nicely.  The queen in #5 subsequently performed poorly and was superceded, with two queens in the hive coexisting for a while.  The new queen laid like crazy, and #5 now has two full boxes with a super, too.

Number 4 was the second strongest coming out of winter.  After reading about swarm management techniques, I decided to work on this one.  I started by reversing brood boxes in March.  In April, after the population grew some more, I began shifting frames between the boxes, trying to approximate as well I could the checkerboard pattern.  I removed the queen from the super once and replaced her in a re-arranged bottom box.  This is now my strongest hive, and I have not yet found swarm cells in the hive.  It has 3 supers the bees are filling.  There have been queen cups on the bottoms of some frames, but they never had larvae or eggs in them, and I've destroyed them when I've seen them.

If nothing else, this shows me the value of regular and proper manipulation in the spring.  SImply putting supers on doesn't seem to thwart swarming.

My next manipulation will be to pull some frames of brood from this hive and some from other hives, both to reduce population pressures and to make nucs for increases.  If I find queen cells, I'll place them in the nucs.  Otherwise, I'll let the nucs raise their own queens.  I hope this way to have a half-dozen hives of at least one box strong enough to winter over by stacking and protecting them.  

-- Kris

[Michael Bush]

>If nothing else, this shows me the value of regular and proper manipulation in the spring. SImply putting supers on doesn't seem to thwart swarming.

You are correct.  It does not.

[Brian D. Bray]

Swarm management is part of spring house keeping and not always successful.  enjoy your encrease, it sounds like you have a fairly good plan for a growing apiary.

[Finsky]

First of all you need a bee stock which is slow to swarm. That features becomes from "human hand " after genetic selection.  If you continue swarming stock you will get swarms.  In nature there are no " nonswarming stocks", because they will die out.  Swarming is only way of  bees to propagate.

http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/PDFs/Swarm_Prev_Control_PM.pdf