lost swarm

[davers]

With swarm season here, I have heard many say that they lost there newly caught swarm after hiving them.  Nobody has advised to put a queen excluder above the bottom board for a week to keep the queen from leaving and to help her get established with brood so she wouldn't want to leave.  How come?

[Michael Bush]

I've never seen a queen who couldn't get through an excluder if she really wanted to...  A frame of open brood will do more to anchor them.  The excluder gets clogged up with dead drones...

[GSF]

You don't need to put on for a week, just about 36 hours. She'll be no good after a week if she hasn't been mated. Ditto on the open brood, if you don't have any use drawn comb. Preferably from the brood nest.

This year I've caught over 30 swarms. Each one I put the queen excluder under the bottom super for about 36 hours and also put some drawn comb in there. I feed through the top cover and with every swarm I put a jar of sugar water on them. So far this year I have had a 100% success rate doing that. I didn't do all that last year and lost probably 3 or 4 out of 27-28 swarms.