Swarming & Swarm Management

[riverbee]

i thought i might post some articles about the biology of swarming, and swarm management of our hives.
(not control; management is a better term, since when do we control bees? seriously? just my HO...  ). 

 if anyone has anything they would like to share and post to help out, please feel free to do so and/or add comments.
 just a comment, most of these articles encourage the reversal of hives or some suggest clipping of the queens wings. i don't reverse my hives, and i do not clip the wings of my queens, but do employ some of the other methods discussed.  take what you find useful and feel free to post what you do for swarm management or ask questions.
 
 from bee culture:

 Swarming-Control and Management

 A Few (More) Comments On Honey Bee Swarm Biology

 Swarming

 Swarm Behavior

 
 other articles and links:
 
 Swarm prevention By Demaree Method
 
 Demaree Method of Swarm Control
 
 Swarming-It's Prevention and Control
 
 Swarm Management

[Jen]

Cool! Looks like I gonna need to curl up with this post with a piece of pie and coffee. Thanks riv!

[LazyBkpr]

Oh yeah! Bookmarked for morning Coffee. Thanks Mrs River!

[Crofter]

I have read that you can make a lot of honey or you can make a lot of bees but you cant do both!  That is probably an overstatement with room for many contradictions.

With so many new beekeepers and the apparent high colony losses of our times, there is a demand for nuc purchases and a focus on increasing colony numbers. If the focus was on keeping hive numbers the same, while producing the maximum honey per operating hive and only enough increase each season to cover winter losses I think somewhat different management practice would be considered.

The latter scenario is probably close to my situation. I have neighbors fairly close and  a cemetery just across the road; I really, really do not want to throw swarms.

I know there have been some posts on different threads with information on techniques to prevent swarms but for search reference purposes it is a bit helter skelter for people who may be coming on the scene in the future.

If anyone has some of their pet methods or knows of a good link I think it could be of value.

[riverbee]

frank,

1st post here:

Spring Divides

1st post here:

Swarming & Swarm Management

 

[Crofter]

Sorry riverbee; I missed that that post was under the title Swarming and swarm management. I saw some quibbling about whether swarm mangagement and swarm prevention were one and the same........ or not! I can see, (depending on ones focus) where having the one was because of a lack of having successfully accomplished the other but it is a narrow line to tread!

[Jen]

Crofter- ""I have neighbors fairly close and  a cemetery just across the road; I really, really do not want to throw swarms.""

To 'throw swarms' meaning let the hive swarm at will and not catch the swarm?

[iddee]

Swarm management is to reduce the number of swarms. Very doable.

Swarm prevention is to keep from having ANY swarms. A total impossibility.

That is the difference.

[Crofter]

I think you are being arbitrary about the definition iddee a swarm comes into existence when the bees form it outside the hive. What is done before this is an attempt to prevent the swarm pre conditions from becoming critical. Difficult but not impossible. I would agree though that if you dont do anything towards preventing them then swarms are just about inevitable.

Probably the climate and length of season, the flow, the strength of the hive, the breed of bee would have some bearing on the degree of diligence needed to be reasonably assured of few swarms.

[Crofter]

Crofter- ""I have neighbors fairly close and  a cemetery just across the road; I really, really do not want to throw swarms.""

To 'throw swarms' meaning let the hive swarm at will and not catch the swarm?

Jen, I have heard it used that way with a slightly derogatory note. If someone were trying to flood an area with drones for breeding purposes it could be done deliberatedly but I would like to avoid the problems swarms could cause me in the neighborhood. I had one issue last year very late in the season which I caught, but likely could have prevented if I had read the signs right a few days before.

I think your local situation has a lot to do with how vigilant you want to be. The closer you take it to the edge might be the best for some circumstances while others would want to build in as much insurance as possible into their actions to reduce the likelihood.

That is what I am exploring.

[pistolpete]

I'm in the same boat.   I have a daycare with a large playground across the lane from my hives.  My nightmare scenario is a huge swarm of bees hanging off the swing set.    I've done a lot of research on this and seems to me like there are two very important components to a successful strategy.  1: young queens.  If you re-queen all hives in the early fall, the chances of them swarming next spring are small.   2: avoid brood nest congestion.  This can be done in a number of ways, but having supers on in time is big.  Box reversal in the spring and removing brood frames now and then also help. 

I think that a young queen in a spacious hive can have a very strong population without swarming.   Re-queening every year may seem a bit overboard, but for those of us who must take great care to avoid swarms it works.

[Crofter]

If I have most of the hives alive come spring I can try to get good honey production out of about half of them and am looking at doing some form of Demareeing on them to try to lower the swarm urge:perhaps may try the Snelgrove divider board which uses the Demaree methods with some added features. The other hives I will pull brood from to keep them a bit weak and keep adding in frames to get more drawn comb in those hives and the nucs I start.

The plan is for all hives will go into winter with new queens. We have had some queens go three years but have had them go queenless at a bad time and a few go rounds with laying workers so I dont see the gain in trying to get the last drop out of them. 

[Crofter]

I will post the link to a little article on a radical method of swarm control. It is radical and goes against the most usual alternative of splitting off a small nuc hive. If you have no other equipment or place to donate some of the brood that is going to bring about a certain swarm, this author claims it is a thing to be considered. When the conditions are reached that triggers the bees essential urge to reproduce, swarming is what WILL happen unless you change some of the main affective conditions.

There are other conditions that can trigger a swarm beside the typical overcrowding with young bees. Jack mentions the scenario of putting an undrawn frame of foundation in the center of the nest, isolating bees that think they are queenless and start cells. An unusually strong flow can wet all the cells and shut the queens laying down and that will cause a swarm even though the population is not high.

https://archive.org/details/radicalcureforsw00jone

[LazyBkpr]

Interesting read Crofter. I will remember this..  Doing splits and re queening this season I doubt I will have a lot of opportunity to try it, but like so many other things, it is good knowledge to have if the necessity arises. Thanks for posting!

[Woody Roberts]

This is what works for me. Any queen I have that is over one year old goes into a nuc with three frames of bees. She may not make surplus honey this year but she probaly will fill two deeps. The doner hive will make another queen and usually lots of honey due to the brood break. Plus I'll snag a couple queen cells for a mating nuc.
As long as the original hive has room they are not prone to swarm with a young queen.
I build most of my nucs after the summer solstice and these queens are usually good thru the next year.
Where I am I cannot get a queen mated right until the blackberries bloom. Until then I just make sure I have room in the brood nest.

[tecumseh]

a snip...
I have read that you can make a lot of honey or you can make a lot of bees but you cant do both!  That is probably an overstatement with room for many contradictions.

tecumseh...
I would suggest it is difficult to do both at the same time.  At some point I have certainly asked myself if some of the current pickle we are in concerning the bees is that we simply are asking for too much and giving back too little.  at some point if you tax the serfs too much, you may well insight them to rebellion??

I would suggest that you can have both if have to potential of doing these two things at different times of the season.

as far as swarm control is concerned (thanks Iddee for reinforcing the rhetorical differences between prevention and control... this may sound minor to the novice but I think one is possible and the other is setting your self up to feel badly) I would suggest Crofter that you look to the old Jerry Hayes's article that Riverbee referenced on another thread.   this process is not dead simple but it is not that complex either and it does have the side benefit of limiting swarming by limiting crowding and congestion in the brood nest. 

[riverbee]

"I would suggest Crofter that you look to the old Jerry Hayes's article that Riverbee referenced on another thread.   this process is not dead simple but it is not that complex either and it does have the side benefit of limiting swarming by limiting crowding and congestion in the brood nest." 

the link to the jerry hayes article is here, post #7:
HONEY PRODUCTION

(queen excluder or honey excluder~jerry hayes)

[barry42001]

I have had a degree of success and swarm management, by providing them with storage space for the nectar that's coming in, providing upper entrance is so that the foragers do not have to come up to the brood chamber to get to the supers, collect a lot of honey you have to have a lot of bees,
it's a matter of proper timing when you maximize the number of Bees. I know for some people it's considered a cardinal sin but I always use two brood chambers. that's making sure that the Queen has plenty of space I also use a queen excluder to keep her out of the honey supers. I've never had issues with the bees crossing into the honey supers through a queen excluder, they do wax it all up and propolize it yes. but the foragers always pass through it. so in short, I maximize the space for the Queen lay eggs, I divert traffic around the brood chamber to avoid congestion, using an upper entrance.and I make sure they have plenty of space to spread the nectar out in because they have to spread it out to condense it into honey and that takes up a surprising amount of space.

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