Are carnolions swarm happy?

[goertzen29]

a little history on the situation:
I'm a 2nd year beek.  Last year I started with 2 packages of carnolians in april. In late june or early July one hive swarmed out of two deeps and a medium.  The other I was able to keep from swarming but it was bursting at hte seams with bees all year.  I pulled about 90lbs of honey from those 2 hives the first year! 
This spring I still had 2 hives, which I split into 4 in late April.


This year I've been having a hard time trying to prevent swarming, I feel like I should have split each hive at least 3 ways instead on in half.  I think 3 of my 4 hives have made preparations to swarm, 1 actually swarmed before I was able to stop it, another I split into 3 hives, and another I'm finding capped queen cells after I'm pretty sure they have already swarmed once this year.  They have room in the brood boxes and over a full medium super of space.  They don't appear over crowded.  And there is relatively little stores. (Not one hive has yet to fill a med honey super)


So I'm wondering if Carnolians are just more swarm happy than other breeds?

Or maybe more picky about their queens?  they seem to have a tendency to supersede new queens (twice with purchased queens and at least one other time with a self-raised queen. )

The other thing that gets me is that 2 of my hives right now are capping queen cells in the middle of august, it seems almost impossible for a swarm to be able to survive the harsh Nebraska winter on less than 2 months of time to forage, and very little blooming.

thoughts?
experiences?
encouragement?

[bee-nuts]

Literature says they are more swarmy.   I can tell you all most every one of my Italian colonies swarmed at least once this year.  I think all you can do is try to keep young queens and give them plenty room.

[goertzen29]

did your Italians swarm after being split?   

Do you have traps set to catch swarms or just let them go?   how do you try to control the swarming?

[AllenF]

I have mostly Italian, Russian, and Minnesota hybrids.  12 hives.  And I did not collect a single swarm this year (but I had 6 new hives in my basement waiting for them and 3 swarm traps outside) .  Give them space and requeen every year so she is a young one in the spring.   

[caticind]

Sounds like you are doing the right thing by splitting often.  Just curious, do you leave the queen with the original hive when you do them or move her to the new hive?

[goertzen29]

I have done it both ways.  Most recently I tried a "flying split" as I read about on here to prevent swarming, I left the queen and a frame of capped brood and a frame of honey in a hive of empty frames in the old location so all the foragers would return to that hive.  The old hive (with the nurse bees, brood and capped queen cells) was moved to a new location to raise their own queen.  It seems to be working I think, I'm just one week in.

Allen and bee-nuts...are you suggesting re queening each year?  I guess I am as it is by letting them swarm;)  I'm not sure I like that idea because I'd rather not buy queens so I would have to kill the existing queen each spring or (fall?) and allow them to raise another?

[AllenF]

It is not completely necessary to requeen your hive every year.  The general consensus is that a newly requeened colony will be more productive and have  less of a tendency to swarm.  Queens are better and cheaper in summer than early spring.  Requeen in late summer and she will still be in her prime in the spring.   And no, I have not requeened any of my hive this summer.  Too much going on so far.   But all my queens were young this spring either from splits or after making it through the winter from late summer splits the year before.

[bee-nuts]

Some of my splits swarmed.  I had traps till I ran short on equipment and needed the frames and boxes.  I had a hard time keeping up with equipment so crowding was an issue with some.  Others however just swarmed a month or so later.  I dont plan on replacing queens every year but I do plan on using swarm cells to raise queens from my best colonies to replace hot or poor queens.  I may even crowd my best colonies to get the swarm cells.

From what I have gathered from other beeks in my area it was just one of those years that everything swarmed.  They swarmed ahead of normal and all summer.  We has lots of rain and nice weather.  Perfect colony reproduction condition I guess.

[backyard warrior]

I personally believe from my research that the carnolian is by far the superior bee in the north. Swarm happy yes they are. Why ?? Because they are very prolific egg layers in the early spring compared to Italians that don't start up as early and if not watched carefully become crowded very quickly. Bees swarm for two reasons. Crowded brood chambers in early spring and secondly is not enough space in the supers during the nectar flow.  Give them lots of room with honey supers on early and reverse the two hive bodies in early spring to prevent swarming. Carnolians are good bees for the cold winters and build up very fast in the spring and they are very gentle bees. 

[goertzen29]

I decided on the Carniolians because of their wintering characteristics.  Backyard Warrior it sounds like you have them too?  what do you use for swarm management?


Part of me says next year just leave them alone, give them tons of room and set out some swarm traps.  I think in part my managing and trying to curb off all the swarming this year may have had a negative impact of the honey production because we have very little this year.   

[backyard warrior]

Give them lots of room when the flow starts if drawn comb give em 5 supers all at once.  If not drawn only 1 box at a time.  Early spring reverse the supers to give the queen room in the deeps making sure all the brood is in the top box if not dont reverse till then or u will break up the brood and chill em. If the colony gets explosive consider doing splits or more intense munipilations of the hive to fool the bees so you dont lose all your workers. You can take all the frames with brood and swarm cells and put them above your lower box with a super of honey between them. The bees will think they are queenless up top but u must cut out all the queen cells until the eggs are more than 3 days old. Once all the bees hatch out of the box up top they will fill the comb with nectar and the queen will fill the lower boxes with more brood and u wont lose any bees during the flow and at that point u can remove the excluder and combine the boxes again and add more supers.  :)

[goertzen29]

thank you backyard warrior for the advice on management.  I'll try to keep that in mind for next year.  I think I wasn't giving them enough room, and I don't have much drawn comb so I think that rather than drawing foundation they were choosing to swarm all the while leaving supers undrawn and unfilled, it kind of makes sense. 

Thank you all for the responses and advice.  I'm always learning.

Jay

[backyard warrior]

If you want drawn comb feed sugar syrup no stop all summer long u will have two deeps and 3 mediums full of wax