New Member / My first Question ?

[Reddog]

Hi everyone, I just found and checked out this site for the first time tonight.  This looks like a great site full of information and knowledge.
I just started beekeeping last spring with my first hive, a 5 frame nuc and a queen.  I think everything went ok last year the hive seemed to fluorish quite nicely.  My question is should I worry about swarming this year and if so what should I do.  I wouldn't mind starting a new hive this spring, however I don't want to rush things.  Any advice will be welcome and I am sure I will have many more questions in the future.

Thanks,

Reddog

[thegolfpsycho]

A second season queen is much more likely to swarm than a fresh one.  There are many discussions on swarm prevention.  Make a search and you will find them.  They all pretty much deal with opening up the brood nest, and there are several ways to do it..  Making a nuc, with frames from your current colony, will help with both your questions.  Open the brood nest up, and give you another colony.

If you still have the nuc box, pulling a few frames with honey, pollen, and open brood and moving them, with attached bees into the nuc will get you going.  They will need a queen, and many ways to get one, or several.  You can buy one, you can move the queen and let the strong original colony raise their own, you can wait until they start their own cells in preperation to swarm, then make your split into the nuc with the queen cells.  One thing to watch out for.  Make sure you get the queen into the right hive.   Many times people miss the queen, move her, then try to introduce a purchaseed queen.  Of course she is killed when released.  And the parent colony begins to dwindle.  A strong colony with queen intact will pick the slack right up when you pull the frames.  But a weak one, or one made weak because you unknowingly took their queen will be seriously set back.  They get a bad attitude to boot.

[Michael Bush]

I would never count on them not swarming.  If they get overcrowded they will swarm.  If you let the brood nest get all clogged up with nectar, they will swarm.  They are LESS likely to swarm with a first year queen and when they are still trying to get established, but if you feed them too much or crowd them too much they will swarm.